The Witches of Norwood County
by Ms. W. Watson
Summary: What is fate? Is fate a set of prearranged and designed patterns, driving us to an inexorable conclusion? Can we turn away from fate? Drive ourselves against the tides? Virginia Kay Walker does not believe in fate. Or so she tells herself. But fate believes in her. On her 25th birthday, through terrible tragedy, Virginia becomes a singularly gifted witch. They call her-the Weaver.
1. Chapter 1

"Alright Bunny, that was pretty good. Though I submit that bit of potato chip is clearly rust-colored, not orange."

"Pops, you have to stop calling me that."

"What…my little Bunny? Why? You carried around that particular stuff animal till you were sixteen."

"Hey! That's our secret, remember?"

"Yes, that is our secret, little leporine," he laughed. "It's between you, me, and…what was her name?"

"Maribel," I said.

"Right, Maribel," he said and smiled.

Maribel had white fur, pink ears, and glassy brown eyes. I still had Maribel. She lived on my nightstand.

"Pops, you're a very precise man. Very academic in your evaluations. So, why does your car always look like this?"

He glanced around before setting his eyes back on the dark road. "Like what?"

"A dump," I laughed.

"The contents of this vehicle are carefully and purposely organized. Those," he pointed to a pile of papers on the floor at my feet. "Are the papers _to be_ graded. Those," he pointed to the backseat. "Are the completed evaluations from last week's lab work."

My father is a brilliant man. He's a physics professor at the university in El Paso, Texas. But very little of his brain power is committed to practical things. Even his hobbies are brainy, nerdy. Like astronomy, weather patterns, and the study of ancient languages. And a bunch of other stuff which, frankly, I can't really appreciate. Like string theory…something about the quantum state of particles.

"Dad!" I lifted my feet uselessly, as I'd already stomped on everything on the floor. "These papers belong to your students?" He merely smiled, not answering but turning the steering wheel blissfully. I picked up the papers, separated the bits of candy wrappers and former foodstuffs, and placed the pile gently into the backseat.

"Ok, it's my turn now," he said. "I spy with my little eyes…something golden brown."

"What?! That's not fair. Half of this car is in the brown palette."

"Well, if you're ready to concede…"

"No, no. I got this." I began scanning the interior of the old Chrysler LeBaron. The cracked brown vinyl dashboard, the ripped fabric seats. This was gonna be hard. Knowing my father, I could be looking for a single strand of thread in the fabric of the seats that turned a shade of 'golden' from years of wear and tear.

I sighed, "Ok, here we go." I got through all the obvious big stuff first, then went in for the goodies. "The light display on the cassette ejector button?"

Yeah, my dad still has a cassette player. And cassettes.

"That is amber-colored my dear."

"The flecks of glitter on the doggie sticker on the dash?"

"No."

"Can we please take that off? Half of it is gone anyway."

"But you put that there when you were ten. I like it."

"Ok…" I shook my head and looked around the car again, attempting to see things with fresh eyes. "This is something I can see right? Those _are_ the rules of the game. You're not cheating are you?"

His eyes shifted up and to the right. The motion was slight, but he'd given himself away. I looked up. "I've already asked if it was the ceiling panel. And the visor material. Is it the mirror frame?" He nodded no and grinned slyly. "It better not be. Cause that color is definitely beige."

"It's not the mirror frame," he laughed.

I sighed again and looked in the mirror. My hair, normally straight, because I straightened it, was cast in messy dark brown curls around my head and shoulders. It had been raining on and off all day. Humidity was my enemy.

I flipped on the tiny light switch and began to finger-brush the knots into neater waves. I licked my thumbs and wiped the black streaks from underneath my lids. I don't wear a lot of makeup. Just a little blush to color my pale cheeks, a little eyeliner and mascara around my eyes…my eyes. I stared hard at myself in the visor mirror. Closely examining my own eyes.

"Dad," I said, with a tinge of warning.

"You found it didn't you, little Bunny! Or _them_ to be precise."

"I found 'em alright. My eyes? Really?"

"In my defense, the visor was down. The mirror was accessible. You could see them."

"But I wouldn't qualify them as golden," I said.

"Oh, I disagree. Your eyes have always had a tinge of gold near the pupil. I remember. I used to stare at them for hours when you were a baby," he said and grinned.

I looked again, seeing the lines of gold, in my otherwise brown eyes, streaking to my pupils. I smiled too, and flipped the visor back into its closed position.

"Hey," he said, gently patting my left hand with his right. "I'm really proud of you honey. You stuck with it and got through school with excellent timing."

I had recently completed my master's program. It was official. I was in debt. And a librarian.

"Thanks, Dad."

"_We're_ really proud of you," he said, over-emphasizing the 'we'.

I grunted. It was soft, but not soft enough.

"What? You don't think your mother is happy for you?"

"Honestly, I don't know what she is, Dad. I don't get why she has to be so cryptic. Why can't she just say what she means? For instance, what was all that weirdness before we left the house? Something about the '_convergence of multiple fateful threads_'." I waved my fingers in swirls across the empty air between us, deepening my voice, affecting a mysterious and wicked tone. He laughed at my attempts to imitate Claire–his wife and my mother.

While my father is everything academic, scientific, my mother is the polar opposite. She is a witch. A very powerful witch. When I was younger, I asked her, begged her, to teach me magic. But she refused. I stopped asking after a while.

"She loves you, you know. She just wants you to be happy."

"Yeah, well, she has a weird way of showing it."

"No matter my daughter. For she was right, tonight is a very special night. We might be getting a glimpse of the rings of Saturn."

"Oooh!"

It was my birthday today. My twenty-fifth birthday. Every year Dad and I went to the observatory up on Franklin Hill. To look at stars and distant planets through the big telescope. Every year we took the drive, played road games, and sang songs…badly.

"_Oh! You get a line, I'll get a pole honey!_" He began singing our song. The song that we abused year after year, hour after hour.

As we continued up the dark and wet highway, belting out lyrics, the rain picked up its pace. The windshield wipers struggled against the wind as it created tiny rivulets of ice down the glass.

I took a deep breath, ready for the next verse, when something caught my eye. An old oak tree on the side of the road. I stuck my nose against the side window, watching the wind move through the upper branches, making them sway and buck. The water cascading in perfect zigzags from the upper to the lower branches. It was strange. The movement seemed…intentional. Almost choreographed.

But that was impossible. It was just wind, just rain. They had no agenda.

I shrugged it off and began singing again. A few minutes later we turned up Silver street, the road winding its familiar way through the rocky mountainous terrain. Water poured in streams down the rock face on either side of the road. I'd never noticed that before. How red and bare the hills were up here. My mouth stopped moving on its own. The singing in me ceased.

Something was wrong.

"Hey Dad, can you slow down?" He continued to sing. I had to laugh. He looked so happy. "Dad!"

"What?!" he startled and swerved the car too far to the left, causing the tires to squeal and squelch on the wet road.

When he'd adjusted our direction, and released his death grip on the wheel, his eyes slid to me. We both burst out laughing.

"We cheated death there didn't we, Bunny," he said.

I took a deep breath. "Yeah, we did. You know, it's been really cold today. Just keep all four tires on the road and go slow please?"

In truth, it had been really cold all winter. But winter in Texas, it's not supposed to be like this. We have a cold day, a warm day, a cold-ish day, a hot day. And then lots more warm days. That's just how it is. But I'd seen more icicles in the last month than in my lifetime.

"You got it," he said, squinting hard through his glasses at the dark road, the headlights of his old car barely cutting a path through the torrent. I took a good look at him. Henry and I, you'd never know we were related. His ginger hair, turning white, fine and straight; his eyes as blue as the sky on a West Texas spring day. But watching him, driving like he was ninety-three instead of fifty-three, hunched over the steering wheel, I adored him. I adored the way he styled his hair in the morning, only to have go flat in seconds. I adored his inability to ever tell a joke properly, always dragging it out and missing the punch line entirely. I even adored his love of Mom. No one seemed to get her like he did.

I slid my eyes softly back over to my side of the road, feeling silly staring at him, opened my mouth to pick up our song but stopped. The chill, the creeping, found me again.

I squinted hard through the front window, seeing only pockets of blackness illuminated by his lame headlights. As I sat back against the creaking vinyl, my eyes finally picked it up. A large shadow topped by frothy bits of translucent white rushed across the road from the opposite side, several dozen feet ahead of us. It hit the bushes and trees first. Then hit an old telephone pole at ground level.

"Dad, lookout!" I screamed, seeing the telephone pole begin its descent onto the road.

He jerked the steering wheel hard, sending the back of the car sliding left and right. He tried to compensate. But only seemed to make it worse with each correction. Soon, we were turning in circles. I didn't know which way was which. Every rock lip, every yellow line on the surface of the road, every tree zoomed and blurred by. And then we were falling. Up became down. Over and over.

Time slowed. Papers from the back and front seats floated up, seeming suspended in air. We finally stopped as the front of the car hit something hard. I was thrust forward in a violent jolt. Then the world went black.

…my head hurt…my chest hurt. Where was I?

I blinked twice, twice more, trying to clear my head. I was in the car. We'd just been in an accident. I reached up, feeling little welts all over my face. My fingers came away wet and red. Everything felt dull and slow. I moved both my arms. Those were working. I tried to move my legs. Those won't working. But not because they didn't want to; the dash had moved forward by at least a foot, trapping them. I was wet from the neck down. The rain poured in from the broken front window and cracks from the passenger windows. But especially, the driver's side. As the car had come to rest on its side, with Dad closer to the road above us. The front of the LeBaron was wrapped around a tree.

"Dad?" His head was slumped to the side. I couldn't even see if he was alive. "Dad?" I asked louder this time, my voice cracking. His head finally moved.

"Are you ok?" he softly croaked out, turning his face to me. He had a large cut over his right eye. But he didn't look so bad.

"Yeah, I think so. How about you?" I asked.

"Ugh…I think so. So much for the airbags."

_Airbags._ Stupid airbags. He was right, the stupid airbags were still inside the stupid dashboard.

"That's it. You're getting a brand new car when we get outta this ditch."

He huffed out a laugh and I heard a horrible thing. A terrible sound. Gurgling.

He lifted his head back and we both saw it at the same time. The gear shifter was old-school. One of those that was attached at the base of the steering wheel. But it was not attached anymore. It had snapped off and was sticking out of my father's chest.

"Oh my god," I breathed, reaching out instinctively. But what the hell was I gonna do?

"Stay still. Just stay still Dad. I need to find my cell phone." I looked around the mess, the wet chaos that was the car. My purse, it was on the floor. I had put it on the floor. I stretched my arm and fingers as far as they would go. Dad yelped.

"Honey," he said. "I think you might want to stay still." His voice was calm. Unbelievable calm. I was not.

"Jesus, Dad. We need to get help. But I don't think I can get to my phone without…moving everything in my lap." And driving that stick further into his chest. I kept that thought to myself. But we both knew it.

"Where is your phone?" I asked.

He nodded slowly, drops of water falling from his chin. "I don't know sweetie. It was in the back seat when we left the house."

His phone was not in the back seat anymore. It was right next to me. The tiny screen was cracked, wet, and dead. "It's not working." I looked at him, reached over with my left hand, "You just need to hold on ok?"

"Virginia…I can't feel my legs."

I swallowed hard. "Ok Dad, just hold on, you're gonna be alright. Someone will notice the marks on the road. Someone will come for us. You're gonna be fine. We'll get help."

I'm not sure I believed a single word I said to him. But it didn't matter, I had to say them. And someone would come for us. Someone had to come.

But no one did. We sat there for an hour, two, maybe more. We talked about my new job at the public library. We talked about mundane things, the last movie we saw. My teeth began to chatter as the shock wore off. His shock took longer, but eventually it gave in; the shaking of his teeth, it made his whole body shake. He was feeling it now. The pain.

I thought of my mother, and how she'd done something for me when I was kid…maybe eight or nine. I'd fallen off my bike and landed on some gravel. A particularly big rock had stabbed into my side, piercing my liver. All I remember is being in the car, driving toward the hospital, and her waving her hands over me, speaking rapidly. It was a spell.

The spell, her words, her power, had saved my life. I could use that spell. What was it? The words were there in my head, but not at all.

Why hadn't I paid more attention? Why hadn't I tried to use magic more? Why hadn't she taught me?!

I began crying. Overwhelmed by my own impotency and watching him try not to look how he felt. He almost passed out several times. I knew enough to know I needed to keep him awake. I started screaming his name, Henry. I only saw my father cry once, at Nana's funeral. But in those hours, he cried too, several times.

He finally smiled softly and squeezed my hand, his lips and chin shaking. "We…c…can't…c…cry Bunny. Every…everything will"

He didn't get to finish his sentence. The rain must've finally moved or softened the ground or branches underneath us. The car slid forward another inch. It was enough. I looked at him, shock filled his face, his eyes went glassy. Just like my bunny, Maribel.

"Dad?"

Blood poured from the wound around the gear shifter now.

"Dad!"

He gripped my hand hard. His eyes filled with fear. I opened my mouth to say something, anything. But nothing came out. His grip went limp.

"No!" I screamed, the terror bubbling up from the bottom of my spine and erupting from my throat like hot lava.

I'm not sure what happened next. But his grip returned with a vengeance. The light returned to his eyes.

"Don't let me die. Don't let me die. I don't want to go. I don't want to go!" he said over and over and over again.

"I don't want you to die," I mumbled through the shock. I didn't know what else to say. And then…I began to feel his fear for my own. Could taste it on the back of my tongue. His grip was strong. The bones in my hand were being crushed to breaking.

"Dad, let go," I said. I wasn't sure where the words came from. "Dad! Let go!"

And he did.

Somehow, in that moment, we got mixed up. Together, we passed over. I was surrounded by pure love, by light. I was not in my body anymore. I could see the car beneath me, stuck in the ravine. But I struggled. I fought. I wasn't ready to die either. A terrible ripping sound filled my being. As if the nature of reality were being torn in two.

I was suddenly in my body again, gasping for air, for life-giving breath. My body cold, but it was there, and I was alive. And so was everything else.

My gasps turned inward as my mind tried to process what I was seeing. Lines…patterns…movement. The trees, the brush, the rain–everything had patterns. Unique and similar patterns. Threads of light reaching out from one thing to another. The ground was a river of light, lines flowing and intersecting with each other, reaching up into everything connected to the ground, forming new patterns. The dance was perfect and chaotic.

Even the car had patterns, but geometric and static.

I looked over at Dad. His patterns were different. Soft blue and green pinpricks of light blinked on and off, up and down his torso. As I watched, the flickering slowed, and finally stopped. His body was quiet. Empty. My father was gone now, truly gone.


	2. Chapter 2

_Ten years later _–_ Santa Fe, New Mexico_

"The young mage, Viola, pierced the water with her vision. Pierced it with her sight. Her magical sight. She could see the amulet, lying at the bottom of the lake. Glowing. Shining. Seeming to dare her to dive in and take it for herself," I read, pausing to look at Brittany's young face. "But the bottom of the lake was a long way away."

The group of kids, part of our Wednesday night reading group, Finagle a Fable, leaned forward in anticipation. Their eyes wide, their mouths agape. Even the parents were rapt.

"Viola turned to her friend. Her best friend in the world, Brian. Brian was an elf, she a mage. Their friendship was dangerous. But precious to her. As was Brian. And he was dying. The magic contained in the amulet would save him. But getting it might cost her…more than she could afford."

Eight-year old Brittany Wright. Her eyes went wide. Her hands flew up to her mouth. I tried not to smile. But my lips fell into a funny grimace. For as Brittany was moved by the efforts of the young fictional mage, so was Brittany's soda by way of her elbow. Strictly speaking, drinks are not allowed in the library. But I let people cheat in the reading room. As soon as the cup started its descent, my instincts were already firing. My fingers barely brushed the air as my mind pushed out. The cup was suddenly two inches to the right. Sloshing but upright. A paper cup with a volume of liquid is a simple thing. The patterns are quiet, almost dead. Redrawing the pattern two inches to the right was nothing. Like brushing my hair.

"But this was Brian." I continued reading as if nothing had happened. "And he would not hesitate to save her life. Viola took a deep breath and pointed her hands at the rough surface of the water. Fire leapt out from her palms and cut the water in two. Creating a sizzling tunnel of steam and bubbles. She took one last look at Brian's pale face, his wilting ears, and dove into the icy valley."

I calmly closed the book, _The Petulant Mage_, and smiled at all the young faces. Yes, a witch reading a story about mages. I don't do these things by accident.

They clapped, as they always do, and moaned, as they always do. Ya gotta leave them wanting more.

"We will see how Viola fares in her lake retrieval next week," I said as they filed out.

"That was awesome." A cracking young male voice said from behind me.

"Hey James. How's it hanging?"

"A little to the left, Ms. Walker."

That's James Esquivel. A thirteen year-old boy on the cusp of twenty-five. He's been coming to the reading hours since he was a sprite, since he was barely tall enough to reach my knees.

"Well…good for you." I smiled at him.

"That's a good story. Really exemplifies the bond of friendship."

I raised my eyebrows at him, but not so much. If James wanted to play adult, so could I. "True. It also peaks the imagination, the wonder at magic still left in the world."

He nodded seriously.

_Just don't grow up too soon, James._ I knew James rode to the library on his skateboard. I knew he played sports and video games. But any thirteen year-old kid that still loves to read, I will always find time for.

"Ms. Walker, I have to do a book report on Christopher Columbus. Can you help me find the right reference book?"

James knows the library as well as I do at this point. He could find it on his own. But he enjoys my company.

"Sure. Let's hit the history section and see what we can find."

"My mom says Columbus was a pendejo douchebag," he said. His fingers idly tracing a line down the metal racks as we walked.

I stopped in the Mesoamerican section. "James…really?" I fixed him with a stern glare. I wasn't his mom. I wasn't his teacher. But we do need our boundaries.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "But that's what she said."

"I agree," I said, too low for him to hear, then continued walking. "Ok, here we go…Christopher Columbus: an Age of Exploration for Kids."

He pursed his lips at me.

"Too sophomoric for you. Right," I said.

"Sophomoric?" He struggled with the word. "What's that mean?"

"Too simple for your mature mind."

He nodded in agreement.

"Alright…let's try something different." I walked down the aisle, preferring historical accounts over specific figures. "How about, Columbus and the East Indies: a _New World_ Order." It had all the things James loved: greed, blackmail, murder.

He grinned. "Nice."

"I do not envy your teacher," I said as we walked back to the front desk.

"Why's that Ms. Walker?"

I just smiled at him. "It's not important." I typed in the call number and scanned his card and book. "There we go."

"Wait!" he yelled and ran off, drawing several annoyed looks from other adult readers. I shrugged at them. They'd get over it. The young man was excited about reading. They should be happy, I was.

"Here," he said, slamming a new book down, excitement bubbling from his wide grin.

"_Doctor Sleep_ by Stephen King."

"I saw it on the return trolley. It's ok that I grabbed it?"

"Of course it is."

"I been _dying _to get this sh" James paused, and looked up at me. "This book."

"I know. Mr. King still your favorite author?"

"Oh man!" He danced in place, snapping his fingers, flicking his wrist.

I smiled. "Hey James, where is Lilly? I haven't seen her in weeks."

His handsome little face fell. "She's still sick. Or so her parents say."

James has had a partner in crime since he was a wee sprite. A girl, in the same grades as him, Lilly Scarlatti. Him with full Mexican blood, brown and beautiful. Lilly with her strawberry-blonde locks and ivory skin. They were ridiculously adorable together. Reminded me of myself and Newton. In our case, I was the boy, she the girl.

"Do you know what's wrong with her?"

He shrugged. "Her mom says she's got some immune thingy."

That stopped me. "Autoimmune? Lilly has an autoimmune disorder?"

"I don't know. Her mom is always super pissed when I come over. Starts going on. Gettin' crazy. Like it's my fault or something."

"Why would she think that?"

"Well…" He looked over his shoulder, to the left, and to the right. I knew that gesture. I'd made it when I was a kid. Other kids in the library had made it thousands of times. When telling secrets. "She's been sneaking out to meet me."

"James," I chided him. "If she's that sick, she could get worse by carousing."

He drew back. Apparently, James did not 'carouse'.

"Yeah I know. But it's been like _three_ weeks. She's gonna die of boredom."

"Look, I know you care about Lilly." I learned across the desk and let my power out a bit.

It's been ten years since I was born a witch. And I've learned an awful lot in that time. Thought patterns are as unique as snowflakes. I could almost identify someone more easily by their thoughts than their face now. Children's thoughts are less busy, fewer flashes of light. But I could see James' mental patterns spiking outward, fighting with themselves. Like he wanted to tell me something. I reached up and pulled a strand of my thick hair back behind my ear, at the same time, letting my fingers brush the air, pulling on the struggling lines around his forehead.

"Ms. Walker…"

"What is it?"

"I won't tell her. Lilly I mean. But…she looks bad. Sick. Don't tell her I said so," he finished quickly.

"No sweat. Cross my heart, won't say a thing." I crossed my heart. "Alright, James. Thanks for telling me." I didn't say that I might be able to help her, but pushed James toward the door. "You run on home now and start your scathing report on 15th century explorers."

He smiled and waved, threw down his skateboard and was off. I walked toward the rear of the library, intent on my task, swiping my card through the reader and got to my desk. I rifled through my drawers and boxes and years of memories. Christmas cards, projects, letters, all given to me by the dozens of students that had filed in and out of the library. I finally landed on something tangible. Something we could use. A birthday card made for me, by Lilly, when she was ten.

It was a large piece of construction paper, folded in two. The face was covered with two strands of plastic, dark pink and glittered, in the shape of a heart. Except the ends meeting at the top were the heads of snakes. Lilly knew I loved snakes. And though they scared her, she designed a beautiful and sharply insightful sort of feminine caduceus. I hated the thought of burning it, but Lilly was in some sort of trouble.

I put the card into my satchel and walked back through the library, gently assuring the stragglers that the library would indeed be open tomorrow if they weren't ready to check out. I shut and locked the doors behind the last person, the last employee, and turned the lights down.

I love my library. It's my sanctuary. Especially at night. The books speak to me. And all libraries, regardless of their size, are magical places. They hold not only slices of history–from dinosaurs to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire to microchips; and untold number of tales–from romance to murder to cyborgs. But they hold something else. Something that witches can feel and I can see. And touch. I pushed my power out fully and let the library become a vast glowing network of intersecting lines and complex patterns. Each section holds unique patterns.

Sometimes, libraries can feel haunted, packed with some ineffable presence. You can feel it when you pick up a book. With its worn pages and musty smells. There's also what we call–emotional residue. Every time a person reads it, they leave behind a bit of themselves. As they react to what they're reading. Their mind and emotions creating physical markers. Like a dog marking its territory.

I moved along the history aisle, stopping in the section containing World War volumes. The smaller block of WWII sucked in energy from nearby shelves. I reached out and unraveled some of the denser tangles. Called in energy from the higher planes. The obvious part of my job is cataloging. The hidden part is cleaning. Cleaning the clogs of human emotion. But this is an art. Clear too much, and the book feels new. Loses some of its magic. Clean too little, and the energy adds to the natural breakdown of paper, ink, and glue. Aging the pages and words faster, also leaving a funky aftertaste in the aether for the next reader.

I continued walking, passing the reference section easily–art, cooking, crafts…was fairly light and quiet as usual. I reached the fiction aisles. It was a shadow puppet display of lights: excitement, intrigue, love, lust, fear, terror, hope, despair. All peaked and at play. The fiction section is less dense than history, but far more active. I mostly leave it alone. It's part of what makes fiction wonderful. The emotional roller coaster rides.

I was finishing my sweep across the hazy philosophies shelves when the aether did something strange. It became quiet. Still. As if the nature of sound were being suspended…or vacated. Where there was even the sound of the air conditioner, the far away roar of traffic, now a vacuous space existed. I stopped and waited.

_Pop!_

A sharp spike of energy pierced the emptiness, bringing everything back into place at once. The sound of a heavy coin bouncing off a tile floor filled the library from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. It crescendoed into a high pitched peak, rattling my teeth, then disappeared. I stood there, staring at the spine of "Faxes From Heaven", across the aisle in the religious section, waiting for something else to happen.

"Huh." I looked back up and down the dark aisle. The aether was always doing weird shit. It's a damn busy place. Maybe somebody got stuck in the library somewhere?

"Hello?" I called out, my voice bouncing off the ceiling before being swallowed by the thousands of books. No one answered. Not from this side, or any other. I shrugged it off, finished closing up, and exited the library.

Newton screeched to a halt in front of the doors right on time. Her flashy new sports car–a dark silver two-door Porsche Cayman–glimmered in the last bits of twilight. The thing must've cost more than my student loans. But it sure was pretty.

"Hey," I said, throwing my stuffed satchel into the tiny space behind the seat.

"Hey," she replied, her squealing tires making a dramatic exit from the parking lot.

"So…how is my favorite librarian?"

I shifted in my seat uncomfortably, trying to decipher the sophisticated bevy of buttons and levers at my command. "Dammit." I muttered, pushing the wrong button, feeling some lumbar thingy push into my back. I just wanted to move the seat back a few inches. This chair, and car, were like sitting in an overly contoured seat in a futuristic space shuttle.

"Fine," I grunted, deciding I was as comfortable as I was going to get. I looked over at Newton. While my normal frame was having a hard time finding a comfy, happy groove in this race-track, tightly-enclosed, tech ride, she looked completely at home. And she had a few inches as well as a good fifty to sixty pounds on me. But there she was, buxom chest, wide hips, and a body I would never call overweight, more 'Amazonian'-like, fitting snugly and perfectly into her space chair.

"You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say this is a serious midlife crisis car."

"Did you know Porsche makes an electric sports car?" she asked, ignoring my statement.

"I can honestly say I did not know that."

"It only comes with an automatic transmission. No manual," she said, shifting gears faster than my eye could follow. "And I will never reach midlife. I plan to live forever."

Newton is forty-one. Barely midlife for a witch. The oldest witch on record is Margaret Thrifton of Salem Massachusetts. She died at one-hundred and fifty-two. The thought of living that long, it actually terrifies me. And poor Margaret, she had to move to a new town as she passed one-hundred and ten. The neighbors started getting suspicious.

"And how is my favorite attorney? Did you win that divorce case you've been working on?"

"Of course I did." She grinned slyly and shifted gears, jetting us onto the freeway. "It was a lot of '_she gave up on me_', and, '_he stifled my freedom_'. Typical divorce chatter. I did get her five-point-two million and four-thousand in alimony in the final settlement though."

"Wow. Maybe I _should've_ gotten married."

Newton visibly twitched, jerking the steering wheel of her race car an inch to the left then right, swerving over the yellow lines and back.

"Whoa! What the hell?"

"Virginia," she said, her voice low and dangerous. "How many times do I have to tell you this. Getting married is a bad idea. And getting married to a musician is an even worse idea."

"What's wrong with musicians?" I don't know why I asked that question. I knew what was coming.

"Poor," she said, pausing to take a breath. "Poor, poor, poor."

"Yeah, yeah. Alright. You can stop that. But money isn't everything you know? And I like musicians." I lowered my voice. "For some odd reason, they don't tend to ask a lot of questions." But she heard it. She smiled.

"Well, I think you made the right decision. Getting married doesn't resolve problems. It only compounds them."

"Thank you Empress Obvious. But Gary was a nice guy."

Gary and I, we were a whirlwind of love and lust. A short whirlwind. He knew I was hiding something. He thought marriage would help loosen my lips. But this was my typical problem. Dating sleepers. As the pool of available witches to date was horrendously small.

_Sleepers_–people unaware of magic. Frankly, a rude term if you ask me.

"Yes well, Gary could still have taken half your assets," she said.

"What the hell are you talking about? He would've been the proud owner of half a couch?"

"You do have a savings account don't you?" I nodded. "Which I've told you a thousand times is no kind of investment at all." I opened my mouth to protest but she kept talking. "That money is an asset. A liquid asset. He could've asked for half…or more."

"Hmph." Why did any part of that statement not feel comforting to me?

The car was quiet for a minute.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. I know that breakup was hard," she said, jutting her chin proudly toward the dashboard.

"Please don't apologize again. You've been there for me more times than I can count. And you're a very busy woman. I know you had an important case. Wasn't it…the Vexing Vixen?"

"The _Waxing_ Vixen," she laughed. "She was a waxing technician in a spa."

"Right. And a drug lord's girlfriend? Who stabbed him to death?"

She was quiet for a second. "It was self-defense."

She won't say it, but I think Newton is a tad bit feminist.

"Twelve times?"

"He was abusive," she replied quickly. "A jury of her peers found it to be self-defense."

Newton is a witch like me. But far more seasoned. And far more knowledgeable. Her power is in her voice. She's what's known as a _Siren_. She can attach intent to her voice, as it travels through the Fabric. When she has eye contact, she infuses it with a bit of hypnosis. The extent to which she can use her powers to induce suggestibility is mind boggling. Kind of scary to think she's an attorney.

I smiled at her serious tone, and held up my hands in my own defense. "Hey, all I know is what I heard on the news." She grinned back.

As we made our way deeper into the hills, farther from the city, the sky turned to dark pinks and blues. The road soaked in the glow from the red rock lining the freeway for the miles and miles of jagged and craggy formations. Eventually, Newton spoke again. It was a single word, and I knew what was to follow that single word.

"So…"

"So," I repeated reluctantly.

"The summoning."

"The summoning. Right." I felt the air in the small confines of the car charge. "Look Newt," I said, before she could get another word out. "You don't have to do this you know. It's just a summoning. They can't make you do something you don't want to do."

She waited, chewing on my words. "No one is making me doing anything, Virginia. I know you're not fond of the council. But who sits on the council is very important. With the wrong person in that seat, the effects could be disastrous. The council are king and queen-makers. Putting people into positions of power, taking them out."

"It's not that I'm not fond of them. It's just…" I had met the American council members two weeks after Dad's death. I had only heard Mom speak of them once. Though Mom is a witch, she belonged to a coven for a relatively short time. And the council is supposed to regulate magic for the American covens, not singular witches. Though I've heard they keep tabs on everyone. After the accident, they asked to see me. Apparently, I made a quite a splash into the world of witches. The council is also supposed to watch the tides, influence them.

Meeting them was one of the strangest experiences of my life. And that's saying something.

…

My heels clicked on the tile floor, echoing across the expanse of the long hallway. I was wearing a tasteful knee-length black dress. I looked nice. I don't know why. But I felt like I should be. Mom was dressed up too. The last time she dressed up was for Dad's funeral. And the time before that…I couldn't remember.

Another thing I couldn't remember was how we got here. We were in a large house somewhere in the… northern United States? As we pulled up to the house, I had noticed the giant pines and firs lining the driveway. They weren't the short shrub-like trees we had in the Southwest. But the trees, the long driveway, the open blue skies…that's all I could recall. Apparently, the council members like their privacy.

I paused as we reached the double doors at the end of the hallway, my hand hovering over the brass doorknobs.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Mom asked.

I turned. "They said they just wanted to talk. What harm can come of a conversation?" If I had any sense, I'd be mad at her. At Mom. But I didn't. I was still confused. As if the day, the whole day of the accident, had not happened at all. "Why don't you wait out here." I told her. She looked like I'd hurt her feelings. Or maybe she worried. It was too late for any of that.

I turned back around, blew out a nervous breath and went for the knobs again. But both the doors opened for me. There was no one directly behind them.

There were four women sitting near an expanse of bay windows at the far end of the room. The room was largely unadorned. The four women, all but one surely in their seventies or eighties, sat in simple wooden chairs. The chairs could've been from Ikea. Somehow, I thought the great Council of Prophets would be sitting in crystal encrusted bejeweled thrones or something.

The four stood as I approached.

"Hello, Virginia." They announced together.

Creepy.

The youngest, maybe in her forties or fifties, approached me with a wide genuine grin. I recognized her now, it was Jane Anne. I had met her several times when I was younger. She was one of the few people, witches, that Mom ever truly befriended. She'd also been at the funeral. She had hugged me, and said she was sorry. That was nice.

"Hello again, Virginia." Her easy smile felt like a cool breeze on a humid day.

"Hi Jane Anne. How are you?"

"Oh, I think that's a question I should be asking you." She held me at arms' length, her hazel eyes studying me softly. "Have a seat. Can I get you some water or tea?"

"No, thank you." I said, then sat down in the chair opposite them, obviously meant for me. I wanted to get this over with. The four of them stared for several minutes.

"Your eyes," the second one down spoke.

"The left one," the first one spoke again.

"_That happened after the convergence?_" They finished in unison.

Yep, the group speaking thing, _really_ creepy.

"You mean the accident?" I asked.

"There are no accidents, Virginia."

I frowned and finally answered. "Yes. My left eye was brown all my life. It turned blue, after the _accident_."

"And you were a sleeper? You had no gifts, had shown no sense of awakening before the incident?"

"Was I a witch?" They nodded in unison. "No."

"Your mother, Claire, she has significant insight into the Fabric. She never taught you how to use magic?"

I took a deep breath. "No."

"Why?"

And another breath. "I don't know. You'll have to ask her that question."

They stopped, their ancient eyes shifting back and forth between each other. They were clearly talking to each other without the need for speech.

"And you can see the Fabric? How it appears, how it manifests, in this dimension?"

I shrugged. "I guess so."

"_Tell us about that night. In detail. What happened, from the second you left the house._" The way they asked, it felt more like a demand.

I sighed and launched into the story. Pausing several times. Swallowing hard when I saw my father's face in my mind. Especially his fear. I left out the part about what I'd seen just seconds before the accident. I still wasn't ready to say it.

They listened intently then began chattering between themselves.

"_This is the ripple that was felt. His death must have been the catalyst to a new string of events. A new progression of the threads. Had he not died, she would not have been awakened._"

I frowned again. The way they were talking about me, like I wasn't in the room, it bothered me. The way they were talking about him, like he was some sort of pawn, it really pissed me off.

"Stop," I said, my voice low and dangerous.

"_This event can only be seen as the beginning, a turning of Fate's intent to a new destination. The ripple that created the Weaver must be divined._"

Yes, I was even given a special title–the Weaver. I didn't want a title. I wanted my father back.

The four witches continued their weird shared speech and thoughts; I continued to get angry.

"Stop it," I said again. This time, my power, my new power, pulsed out. I had very little control of it. In the last two weeks, I'd learned only that I could call it. Not much more.

The wind outside brushed through the nearby trees. The branches and leaves shook, scraping against the windows.

But they ignored this. They ignored me. Now I was just fucking mad.

"_We know this had significant effects on multiple dimensions. Her destiny is now inextricably bound to the new ripple. And only a death could have turned the tides so."_

"I said stop it!" I yelled and stood. The room shook. The entire house shook. My fists were balled. I was panting.

I noticed a light mist of powdery substance settling to the floor all around the room. There were no cracks in the walls. But I know what drywall looks like. I'd help Dad rebuild a room once. Drywall is awful stuff, gets everywhere. And in this room, it was as if part of the drywall was outside the walls now.

_Did I do that?_ The thought was enough to calm me down.

No matter, I had their attention now.

"Don't talk about him like he's not here," I said through clenched teeth. That made no sense. But I was beyond sense. "This was a horrible thing. A wrong thing. I don't care how you interpret it. I lost my father. And I would give this…_thing_ back, if I could."

"Virginia, this ability," the first witch said. "It is an honor. You have created a whole new ripple. Who knows where this will take you. Take us." They picked up the shared speech again. It was starting to make me dizzy. "_And matter. Space. Time. These things are now fluid. Mutable. Flexible. For you._"

"Are you saying that I change time? That I can go back, and save my father?" But they didn't answer. They looked at each other. As if they might know the answer, but weren't sure if they should tell me. "Well?"

After a minute of waiting, I sighed, grabbed my purse, and scraped my chair along the floor. "I came here voluntarily. I told you what happened. Now, I'm leaving."

I walked out the doors, and did not look back.

…

That was the first and last time I'd met the council members. Though I'd be seeing them again soon.

"The council watches the tides," Newton coolly continued. "And change them if they find it necessary. It's said they can perceive fate in a way that extends into the past, present, and future. Like an ocean. They can change the tides such that certain events happen faster, or stop some events from happening at all."

"Hmm." How could I put this delicately? "_Creepy_. That's creepy, creepy, creepy." I said, repeating her earlier sentiment. "Are you saying they can change my day? They can stop me from doing something I want to do? Stop me from opening my bookstore?"

"Not necessarily. And yes."

"Ugh," I shivered.

"They can make it easier, or more difficult. Put things, events, in your path."

"I've said it once, I'll say it again, that is simply wretched. I don't think anyone, witch, sleeper, or otherwise, should be directing the _tides_ of fate. No one should have that kind of power."

"It's not about power. It's about wisdom. It's about seeing events from a higher perspective."

"Exactly my point! Wisdom is subjective."

Her eyes flashed to me then back to the road. This was one of our circular pointless arguments. One neither of us ever seemed to win. Newt believes in the rightness of fate with the same conviction that I believe in the powers of the present.

"I can feel them, you know. The tides. I can feel them pulling on me. Sometimes pushing. Depends on how stubborn I'm being that day." The way she said stubborn, she wasn't just talking about herself. And her sneaky little eyeballs slid to my side of the car. "Can't you feel them? Leading you in certain directions? Pulling on your gut?"

I shook out a hard no.

"Why don't I believe you?" she asked.

"Well…you'll be weird," I said, ignoring her rhetorical question, and appealing to her vanity.

She laughed. "I won't be weird. I'll still be me. I'll just be…more."

That wasn't true. We both knew that. Being on the Council of Prophets was more like being part of a whole. Sharing your thoughts, your emotions. It changed you. And it was a lifetime appointment.

"We'll never see you again, Newt," I added quietly.

She knew that part was true. She sighed loudly and turned to look at me. I didn't look back. I took selfish comfort in the fact that three people were summoned during an election cycle. That meant she had a one-in-three chance of actually winning. If you could call it winning.

"You know, _you_ could easily take a council seat. It's probably where you belong anyway. I bet they would even bend the rules for you. Let you skip Vala and the years of coven service," she said.

Newton is our Vala; she leads the Norwood County coven.

"Sit in a big house somewhere, physically and psychically bound to a bunch of other old biddies, while we grow old together? No thanks."

She laughed at me again. Whereas every other witch would consider it a great honor, the thought of being squirreled away in the woods, watching the seconds of my life tick by, while trying to decipher and drive the ripples of 'fate', sounded like torture.

"You don't know what you could accomplish being part of the council. You could change the fate of man." She started that next part of our pointless conversation.

"Oh no. No no." I interrupted her. "Don't do it Newton. I can barely change the sheets on my bed, much less the fate of man." And we both laughed, like we always do. "You're the one with ambition. Besides, I prefer to stay out of the spotlight. And keep my hand up the proverbial puppet's ass."

She frowned.

"That would be you, dear," I smiled.

"Ah. An apt, if crude, description. Do you know why I chose you as my Vinstri? Why I chose such a young witch?"

Technically, I'm not 'young' at my age. She was talking about my time with magic. Ten years is a blip in time to a witch. Newt has had a lifetime with it.

"Because I look good in black?" I smoothed my black fall knit dress over my naked legs.

"Because you care. Because you care more about being a good person than a powerful witch."

Well now I was just embarrassed.

"_And_ you look hot in a dress."

"See? I knew it. So Newt," I turned to her in my space chair, "Are you ever gonna tell me if you use your verbal mojo in the courtroom?"

"Ms. Walker," she began, her voice taking on that cool but creepy silky note, slithering along my skin. "Why would you want to know such a thing?"

I shivered. "Alright, stop that."

Her laugh rolled around the inside of the vehicle, still carrying the essence of the flare. I shivered again and rubbed at my arms.

"Hey, I have a favor to ask."

"Anything for you puppet master."

"One of my little readers is in some sort of trouble. I'd like to focus the first ritual on her tonight."

"Why do you qualify that as a favor? Virginia, you're my left hand. You keep the most powerful Vala in the Southwest firmly connected to the Fabric. And regardless of my comment, you _are_ an extremely powerful witch in your own right. This is not a favor. It is a qualified request, a summons. You need to assert yourself more often."

I bristled in the dark car next to her. Honestly, I think Newton is assertive enough for both of us. But I wouldn't tell her that.

"Now…what is the girl's name? Of course we can cast for her."

"Lilly. Lilly Scarlatti."

"Lilly…" She rolled the name around her tongue, taking it in. "Do you have a picture of her?"

"Sure, hold on." I searched through the folder, _JuniorReaders_, on my cellphone. I found a picture during a book signing. A selfie of the two of us giving rock-n-roll fingers. "Here. Do you want to see it now? Should you be intoning and driving?"

"I only need it for a second."

She snatched the phone, glanced at the photo, and whispered, "Lilly", then handed it back. "Let's do it."


	3. Chapter 3

Newton and I pulled up to her house a few minutes past nine. The half-oval driveway and adjoining dirt lots were already full. Meaning most of the coven were present. Newton lives on the outskirts of town, at the edge of another county. But it was nice out here away from the city. Sort of quiet and powerfully loud at the same time. And it wasn't like Newton lived in a log cabin. Her sprawling homestead was more mansion with its many 'wings'. Newton Hunter comes from money. She makes a lot of money. It's natural to her.

I blushed self-consciously as we entered the foyer, seeing Newton's girlfriend carrying a moving box out of Newton's house. Her _ex_-girlfriend.

"Charlotte, good to see you." I hugged the tall bendy woman.

"Virginia! You're looking fit as always. I miss you in class though."

But I guess their breakup was amicable. She seemed less put out than I was.

"Ah, I'm sorry Charlotte, I've been so busy. I'll get back to it, I promise." Charlotte was a yoga teacher…and a contortionist. Of course she was.

"Well, we have a few special classes coming up. One of them for Kundalini awakening?" She eyed me for a second too long, suggesting she knew something I didn't, then turned back to Newt. I wondered how much pillow talk Newton actually shared with her lovers. Coven business stays within the coven. No one knows this better than Newt. We won't even start the meeting until Charlotte leaves. Charlotte thinks we're some sort of naturist book club or something. Reading _Sense and Sensibility_ in the nude under the pine trees. I don't know what Newton tells her girlfriends.

"I'm going to head out back," I said to Newton. "Nice to see you again Charlotte."

As I walked down the dark path out the back of the house, I could see the fires burning. There are almost no rules to where a coven must keep their ritual space. Except in their own county and state. But it's smart to build it in a place of power. It makes your spells stronger, more potent. Ours was in Newton's backyard.

I reached the end of the path and stopped between two stone columns. Our temple has no walls, no physical ones anyway. But if you're not bound to our coven, you will not be entering. She will not be letting you in.

The her to which I'm referring is the temple. She feels as real to me as any witch, any person.

I put one foot forward, my toes piercing the invisible barrier. She recognized me right away. I smiled an easy smile, blew out a heavy breath, as I crossed from one world into the next. Our temple is beautiful. Her floors may be dirt, but the temperature is moderate, the plants are green year round, the vines–clematis, ivy, honeysuckle–climb every surface, column, and altar, blooming regardless of the season; and the smell of eucalyptus and lavender floats in the air. Our spells, our collective power, keeps her so.

I stood there for a second. Soaking it in. Letting my human life recede, and the magic flare. Watching the witches in my coven file in from between the thirteen stone columns marking the outer boundaries of the temple. I kicked off my shoes as I spotted our Skyldr–Antoinette. I dug my toes into the dirt, affecting the best sneaking posture I could manage. Feeling like I was twelve again, playing a rigorous version of Murder in the Dark with my girlfriends back home, I stalked her. But Antoinette's feelers extend well beyond mine.

The chopstick-like fire starter in her hand swung around, the business end lashing out with an orange-red stream of fire that wrapped around my torso and licked at my sides. I squealed like a little girl as the harmless sparks prickled my skin and we spent ourselves giggling.

She hugged me tightly and twirled me around. "Oh my god! Why didn't you call me last weekend? We were supposed to go shopping?!" Antoinette Black is undeniably all female. Like Newt, she's got a few pounds and inches on me. But that's where the similarities end. Her long mass of auburn hair loops out in all directions, seeming to defy gravity and spits in the face of anything restrained or inhibited. Just like her. And if I were a lesser woman, I would be jealous of her hourglass figure, her glowing skin, her perfectly pouting lips. But Antoinette is my friend. The sister I never had but always wanted. And she's the kind of woman that radiates happiness. The kind you feel better just being around.

"I'm so sorry, I got bogged down with paperwork," I said, releasing her as she flinched under my touch. "Antoinette…you got another one didn't you."

"I told you I was starting my Phoenix last week." She unabashedly lifted up her shirt, pulled down her skirt and turned to the side. Red and orange flames, mixed with feathers, rose up from below her hip line, giving birth to the outline of a big phoenix on the side of her rib cage.

"Wow." It manages to be powerful and feminine, sleek and sexy. Just like her. Antoinette is an Elemental witch. She's been accumulating earth, air, fire, and water tattoos for as long as I've known her. "It looks amazing. But girl, aren't you running out of room?"

"Nah. Got plenty of room left," she said, grabbing handfuls of her billowing skirts to show virgin naked skin. But not much. "The ribs hurt like a bitch though! And I had to take a few days off work. Which sucked. But I can be molting all over my clients now can I?" she laughed.

The first time I met Antoinette, she was mostly naked, dancing on my lap. Her profession–exotic dancing. Though she calls herself a sparingly-dressed psychologist. Antoinette did go to college. Even has a bachelors. But I've seen her dance, felt it. And she's damn good at it. Those hips of hers are filled with magic.

"Where's Newt?"

"Uh…I think she's talking to Charlotte. Helping her move stuff out of the house."

"Oh man, what is it this time? Does Charlotte smell like beef soup?"

Newton goes through lovers like she's collecting them. I guess that would make me part of the collection. Those first couple of years, we were lovers. But we made better friends. Much better.

We shared another giggle. "I have no idea. Newt told me Charlotte was rockin' in the sack, but lackin' in the knack."

"And what does that mean?"

"Hell if I know. You know how she loves to rhyme. I think she needs a brainier person?"

We both shrugged.

"Hey, Antoinette, already taking your clothes off?" A male voice asked from behind us.

"You wish," Antoinette said.

"Hey, Dylan." I turned and hugged our one and only male coven member.

"Maybe I _should_ take my clothes off," Antoinette continued, walking from one fire bowl to the next, her passion adding to the creation of fire. "Maybe we should all take our clothes off. People need to get out of their heads and into their bodies more. Our spirits are trapped in these corporeal forms, suffocating. The least we can do is get naked, get horny, get loving, get emotional!"

She returned to us, the edges of her hair sparking in the night air.

Dylan raised his eyebrows. "Hey, I'm with you, girl. For about three out of six of those things. I'm all for getting horny and naked."

"Ugh." A bit of Antoinette's fire went out. "The human body is more than an object to be wanted, owned. Sex is more than an act. It is an expression of our spirits."

"Yeah, I love expressing my spirit," he said, a goofy grin splitting his face.

I smiled and shook my head. Theirs is an age old battle. Venus and Mars. Yin and Yang. Leia and Han.

"So Virginia, how's the book biz?" Dylan asked.

"Oh you know, another tax dollar earned, another day of salvation for the written word. How 'bout you?"

"Oh man. Guy brought in a '73 Elky the other day. The body needs work, but the engine is mint. I think he's gonna sell it to me."

I frowned at him.

"The best years for the El Camino are '69 to '72, hands down. But the parts are harder to find," Antoinette answered for me.

_Ah._ My car has one purpose. To get me from point A to B. Dylan is a mechanic. And Antoinette grew up with three older brothers. They both have opinions about cars.

Dylan squinted at me. "That's so hot."

"If you say so." I turned to take my seat but stopped in my tracks. It was being occupied by Sarah Mehta. Sarah is a Siren like Newton. She came to us, Newt, Antoinette, and myself, two months ago from a coven in Illinois, petitioning membership to the Norwood County coven. She wanted to study under Newton. As Sarah's powers are fairly weak, and Newton is the most accomplished Siren in our world. I forgot that tonight was Sarah's first official night in the coven. "Hi Sarah."

"Hi Virginia! Where's Newton?" She looked over my shoulder at the house.

"She'll be along in a minute."

"I've been working on my spells. Newton says I need to work on my intonation and emotional charge. I think I've improved already. Is it true? Was she really summoned to the council seat?"

I'm pretty sure Sarah is in her early twenties. She's a nice girl. A bit too bubbly for me. I certainly felt for her. Moving so far only to have her mentor possibly leave in six months. But I wasn't going to talk about the summoning. Not with her.

"I'm sure you're a gifted caster, Sarah. You know Newton is happy to guide you in any way she can. But…maybe you should take your seat now?"

"Oh! I don't get to sit next to Newton?" she asked, tossing her pretty chocolate bangs to the side.

I blinked stupidly. Sarah knows better. She knows coven rules. The Vala is flanked by the Vinstri and Skyldr. She was neither.

Antoinette saved me. Sauntering over, offering a hand to Sarah, and leading her to a spot on the other side of the fire pit. "Sweetie, you have a very special place in the coven. A place made just for you." Antoinette gave Sarah one of her winning white-toothed sweet smiles and called her power. Little chills ran down my arms as a tiny rush of wind swept by me, filled with the essence of Antoinette. She stopped at a gap in the circle. The ground under her feet shifted and erupted. A mound of dirt, rocks, and root began to coalesce into a form. When she was finished, she stood back and inspected her work. She looked at Sarah's ass then back at the mound. She took two steps toward Sarah and reached around. Sarah gave a small yelp as Antoinette grabbed a handful of both cheeks.

I bit my lip to keep from ruining the moment.

Antoinette turned abruptly back to the form, made a parting-of-the-seas motion with her hands. Sarah looked cautiously on, then took her freshly formed seat, made of earth, just for her. Giving a small nod of surprise when she found it fit perfectly.

The ass-grab technique is pure science.

Newton finally entered the temple, making a grand entrance. Her black silk fitted robe draping behind her, her ivory legs visible from crotch to feet. Her previously origami-ed and bound conservative hair now falling in wild waves around her face. The air became quiet as her electric and charged presence flooded the temple; she waited patiently in front of the stone altar until all of her witches took their places.

"Witches of Norwood County. Tonight we welcome a sister. Tonight we add to our family. Sarah Mehta, stand." Newton's power pushed out and vibrated my ear drums.

She walked over to Sarah, cupped her face in her hands, and kissed her deeply. Much of Newton's natural magic comes from her sexual energy. Her kisses are legendary. Newton drew back after several long seconds and belted out the call, "_Witches, call your power and let it shower._"

This part actually burns me. Not figuratively, I mean literally burns. I learned quickly those years ago that if I call my power too soon, when this many witches flare, I could lose my normal vision for several minutes and be plunged into total darkness. I liken it to staring at the sun. So I waited.

The ground shifted slightly underneath me. A dash of orange shot into the center of the temple from a fire bowel, igniting the wood and cinder in the fire pit. It fluttered hesitantly then erupted. Shooting mad powerful flames in a column, fueled by some unseen force. That's Antoinette. While Newton's power has a sort of sharpness to it, Antoinette's feels fluid and organic. I waited until I felt a certain smoothness, then opened myself to all of it.

The world exploded into softly-colored lights, bundles of patterns, some simple, some complex, all working and moving in a great symbiotic dance. The fire was a crazy display of chemical reactions. Bits of hotness rose above the flames, transforming into carbon. Twenty-nine people glowed in my sight, their bodies an intricate web of sparkling motion, each person emanating a unique light reaching up, connecting them to the Fabric.

The Fabric is the thing from which all life is created. It _is_ life. I don't know where the term came from, but it's a good description. I suppose, it was a way for witches to describe the nature of reality. The Fabric is endless. There are layers upon layers, planes upon planes, all existing side by side, one on top of the other, even inside each other. I don't pretend to know what it is, or the extent of it. But it is beautiful.

"_Welcome, Sarah Mehta, ancient sisterhood renew"_

Newton began the initiate intonation.

_ Bound not by blood, but by choosing_

_To this coven your magic is now affined_

_ Our stories, our fates', our courses twisted entwined"_

The rest of us picked up the spell.

"_Welcome, Sarah Mehta, ancient sisterhood renew"_

Sarah has entry into the temple, but this her official binding. A sort of magical baptism. Casting, you could say, is a witches' bread and butter. But the initiate spell is old and, frankly, a bit outdated. It has also lost much of its power, its meaning. That's what happens when a spell is used by so many. Its binding stretches too thin. In the last five years alone, the number of known witches has almost doubled. Our coven has had three initiates in the last year. Big numbers for us. Though we're actually quite small in comparison. Other covens around the U.S. are growing twice as fast. Newton told me the council believes this may be my doing. Or rather, my birth–the accident.

After three repetitions of the spell, we each rose in turn and kissed Sarah, greeting her properly.

"_Witches of Norwood County,_" Newton's deep and powerful voice flooded the temple again, "tonight we give ourselves to the healing of another. _Lilly Scarlatti_." She waited, letting the name hang in the air and cement on the tongue. I took her queue and rose from my seat, taking Lilly's card with me. It has her hand writing on it, her saliva from the bottom of the stickers–bits of her essence and DNA. I walked to the fire and plucked several of my own hairs out. When creating a spell like this one, you must give something of yourself, a physical sacrifice–hair, sweat, tears, a few drops of blood.

I folded the card as tightly as possible, wrapping the long strands of my hair around it, then dropped the bundle into the fire. The three items–Lilly, myself, and my intent–burned off to form the DNA-shaped misty thread. The Corpalm. A Corpalm is a corporeal offering. It links the physical world to the purely spiritual. The misty thread floated up above the fire, waiting to be bound to the spell.

"_We beg, we bite, by lustful want our sorrow"_

Newton fired off again. There are a limited number of spells witches are allowed to create without the intended's permission. This was one of them. A very basic, harmless, healing incantation.

"_This energy, this body, we can only borrow"_

We joined her, adding our collective powers to the words and the spell.

"_Our natural state is not to splinter_

_But shine, glow, glide and glimmer_

_ So let fire cleanse_

_ Wind carry_

_ And earth bury_

_And call back your rightful claim_

_To love, to life, to joy without pain_

_Be it fracture of mind, body or soul_

_Make it whole, make it whole, make it whole"_

We kept the incantation running around the circle, repeating it in unison. Eventually a click was felt as we synchronized our voices and our powers. We reached a certain equilibrium and fluidity. Especially Newton, Antoinette, and myself. The three, the holy triad in the coven. The power of three is significant in our world. Newton is the top of the pyramid, Antoinette and I hold the two corners. Even our powers are significantly unique to each other. Newton holds the outward movement, the intellect. Antoinette holds the ground, the elements. And I hold the connection to the aether, the spirit.

The spell passed above each of us, gathering strength, transforming from a thin fibrous haze into a thick luminous mist. The Corpalm spun faster and faster on its axis, following the spell. Finally, a loud 'click' reverberated throughout the temple. Every witch could feel it. But I could see it. The spell bound itself, rushed up, and disappeared in a flash down one of the lines above the temple. It will travel along the Fabric now and bind itself to Lilly. I hope she uses it.


	4. Chapter 4

My apartment is a modest but cozy two-bedroom in the east part of town. I have a decent sized living room. A well-equipped kitchen. I'm on the third floor. I wanted to be on the first floor, but those spots are at a premium. Most importantly, I have a large flat screen TV and a big cushy couch.

It was almost midnight. I'd been going over my budget and finances for the last hour. I was too tired to read anything after the meeting last night. Magic tends to take it out of me. Especially when I'm casting hard. But I couldn't avoid these forms forever. The loan papers for my bookstore were sitting on the coffee table where they'd been living for a week. This was my dream. My original dream, before I became a witch. I always wanted to run my own bookstore. Newt says books, the actual ink and paper kind, will be obsolete soon. That the digital versions will outpace and replace print. But I was stubbornly holding onto the idea that some people still want that experience. Of holding a book in their hands. Feeling the magic that has been weaved into the pages and words. Marinating the pages with their own emotions.

I even had the spot picked out. A building down on Shelby Street. Evergreens lined the small street from corner to corner. It was surrounded by galleries, restaurants with outdoor patios, and lots of pedestrian traffic. There was a beautiful park at the end of Shelby with the Santa Fe River at its shores. It was perfect. The building itself was probably a little more than I could afford, but it felt right. It had been a gallery before it closed, and a small printing press before that. I knew exactly where the coffee and espresso bar would be. Which area would hold the reading room. The building had been sitting for months unleased…waiting for me I think.

I'd filled out every box, every check mark on the forms, except one. The one requiring my signature. This was another turning point in my life. Another milestone. As soon as I signed my name, I'd be in debt again. With Dad's life insurance, I'd been able to pay off my student loans years ago. But I hadn't felt like this since I'd left El Paso. Committed to such a big change.

I squelched the nervous jittering of my stomach and signed, _Virginia Walker_. Then delicately inched the papers to the end of the coffee table.

"Now I just have to drop them off," I told myself, eyeing the papers.

_Baby steps, Virginia. Baby steps._

I poured myself another glass of my favorite boxed red Cab and shoved the last piece of pizza down my throat. Resigned to being a mere mortal with only half an eye for the heavens, I turned on the TV. Then slumped down to hide from Fate in the folds of the couch. I finally found something to watch: Total Recall. The old one, not the new. Starring California's now governor.

Antoinette told me that Arnold, during his first run at office, sought out the American council. Asked them for help getting elected. They agreed and bound a type of alluring spell to him. I'm not sure what he gave them in return. The craft is sort of an underground business. Like the mob. But with fewer dead bodies.

I slipped further into the cushions and got sucked into the scene. It was the one where Arnold is caught cross-dressing and his face melts off to reveal his true nature. In our world, he'd be known as a Copycat…or a Shape Shifter. And he'd use energy from the Fabric, not technology, to change his nature, to shift his matter at a cellular level. But that's not important. The mind-numbing hypnosis I feel taking me the longer I watch, _that_ is important.

Yeah, the weirdest movies relax me.

The dirty laundry sitting in a basket on the floor, next to the TV, I swear, it started mocking me. Especially the underwear. I stuck my tongue out at all of it and went back to Arnold.

I took a sip of my cheap but delicious wine and settled in.

_That dress looks atrocious on him._

It was the last thought I had before passing out. Wine set upright on the couch, still in my hand.

…

I couldn't have been asleep for more than twenty minutes. I know because Arnold was now bonding in the cantina with his new mutant friends. I knew this movie well. The wine glass was still in my hand, half full, not a drop had spilled. _Heh, go me._ But I'd been sleeping pretty soundly. That kind of immediate hard core slumber that takes you like a coma. Your heart rate slows. Your mouth falls open from lack of muscle control and you drool onto a pillow…or your chest. But I was awake now. For no good reason. And then it hit me. I was having that same feeling. The one that I'd had the night before last in my library. Like someone is watching me. The hairs on my arm fluffed, raising goose pimples in lines from my shoulders to my wrists. That same quiet that filled the building filled my little apartment. Like the nature of sound was being suspended.

I startled as the television suddenly turned channels by itself. Landing on an infomercial for the ButtBuster. _Was the Universe trying to tell me my ass had gotten too big?_ I giggled to myself then jumped as the television screen went blank. I held my breath. A thickness built in the air. The same tenseness, the same pressure.

_Pop!_

"Ouch!" It was louder this time. And my ear holes felt the pressure change. The sound of a thick fingernail flicking a coin reverberated off the walls, growing in intensity and volume. Then stopped abruptly.

"Shit!" I jerked my head back as something tried to manifest right in front of me. I could almost make out a form. It was round and shiny. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was struggling to exist, to cross the barriers from some other plane to this one. It flickered, then closed in on itself. The television rejoined normality too, changing back to my movie.

"Well…this is getting more and more curious."

I sat there for a minute, patiently waiting. But, apparently, that was the end of that particular little presentation.

I called my power, looking at my apartment with new eyes. The Fabric was as it always was in my place. Clear lines of gold light criss-crossed from one side of the living room to the other. They vibrated with a familiar and comforting hum.

As I sat there contemplating the possibilities, the laundry basket spoke to me again. Something about domestic responsibilities.

_What the hell, I'm already awake._

I downed the last of the wine and eased into my bunny slippers. Given to me by Holly–a particularly gifted witch in our coven, an Animora. She can speak to animals. No, the irony was not lost on me.

I took the long walk to the basement laundry room. Since it was well past midnight, it was a lonely walk. I could wait to do laundry at Antoinette's. I spend most of spare time there anyway. My coven is my family now. With Dad gone, and Mom hiding up in that cabin in Colorado. And Antoinette has a nice house. She says she's my sugar momma. And that she's going to have to make me her non-sexual domestic life partner one day. That's true enough to not be funny.

But dammit, it had been too long since my last relationship. Ok, so, it had been a year. But that's an eternity to a witch. That was another little surprise for me when I crossed over. Before I was a witch, when I was, more or less, a normal person, I had what I considered a normal sex drive. But now, I was hungry all the time. Hungry for love, for passion. And I took it in whatever form it presented itself. I had never found women attractive. At least, not in the carnal sense. But now, I found boobs eternally fascinating for some reason. I got why men stared at them so. Antoinette calls me 'trisexual'. She thinks it's hilarious.

"Hey, Virginia."

_Speaking of sexual._

"Hey, Oscar." It was the new guy from apartment forty-four. I had met him a few weeks ago as I was bringing in groceries, and he was bringing in furniture. Oscar and I had been running into each other ever since he moved in. He had a basket of laundry too. "Getting in some midnight fluff and folds?"

"Yep. I finally got tired of turning my t-shirts inside out. You?"

"Yeah, just dropped mine off." I chose not to mention my lack of clean underpants.

Oscar was a little taller than me, maybe a little older, had dark wavy shoulder-length hair and deep set dark eyes. His nose was slightly crooked, like it had been broken. You wouldn't know unless you really stared. Which I was. His smile was dazzling white. His skin was a delicious and touchable honey-brown. He's what James would call a Mexilite. I would _not_ call him that. Or call anyone that. Oscar was a little shorter and little darker than my type. But damn, was he gorgeous.

"So what brings you to the laundry room at such a late hour? Did you have to work late or something?" I gently and politely probed him for his occupation.

_Please don't be a musician. _I thought, subsequently annoyed that Newton had gotten to me.

"Oh yeah, we have a new stud at the ranch. Guy has an attitude."

I frowned. _Stud? Ranch?_

"And it's getting colder with the sun going down earlier. So I stayed back and helped Jules put blankets on all the horses."

I made a little 'ooh' motion with my lips.

"Yeah, I work at a ranch. A _horse_ ranch." He smiled that friendly big-toothed grin. "I'm a horse trainer."

"A horse trainer." I repeated. Sounding confused.

"People keep their private horses on our ranch. Mostly rich people. I train them for shows, or just riding, make sure they're taken care of. I don't have kids and"

He hesitated and blushed.

"What?"

"They're sort of my kids I guess."

_Well that's adorable._

"Horses are magnificent creatures."

"Yes. They are."

He studied me for a second. "You ride?"

"Oh, no," I laughed. "I'm not terribly ah…_athletic_."

He scanned me, in my jeans, t-shirt, and _dammit_, my bunny slippers, and grinned slyly. "I wouldn't say that." Then shifted his basket under his other arm. His other tanned _muscular_ arm. "It's a good feeling. Riding I mean. I can take you out some time. If you want to learn. I'm a good teacher." He grinned lopsidedly.

_I just bet you are._

"Sure. That'd be great." I smiled back. The thought of riding still terrified me. But the thought of holding onto his waist, made it a tad more alluring.

"Well, I'll let you get to some clean clothes." I finally blurted out, standing in the hallway grinning stupidly at him.

"Alright, it was good to see you again, Virginia." He continued down the hall.

I think we had just flirted. Did we just flirt? Had we finally _almost_ made a date?

_Ugh, I'm totally off my game._

I waved goodbye to Oscar, still flirting for all I was worth in my faux furry rabbit shoes and started walking back to my apartment. I turned a corner, and almost killed an old man.

"Mr. Bushwell!" The eighty-something year old lump of grumpiness growled at me and continued on his way. He shuffled off around the corner without saying a word. I shrugged and turned to continue my trek, but stopped midway down the hall. A curious feeling poked at my subconscious. It yanked on my insides, then on my power. The hallway dissolved into its component parts. Thin horizontal wisps of emotional energy filled the hall. The echoes of so many humans living together in such close quarters. But the thing that had poked at my mind, was not that. It was the wicked blue and slimy bogey perched on the hallway wallpaper, hanging from its four limbs, dripping goo from a row of sharp teeth. And it was looking right at me.

I stepped backward, around the corner from which I'd come, and flattened myself against the wall. Suddenly, I wondered if this was what I'd felt earlier. And the day before that. But that thing didn't look complex…just nasty.

A bogey in our world is not something superstitious. They're not from another world. They're from _our_ world. Created by humans. They are a collection of our emotions, bad intents, our vitriolic gestures and actions. Like negative residue.

It struck me then…did it belong to Mr. Bushwell? Had he done something nasty? Nasty enough to create the thing. Or was it just following him?

One thing was certain. It had noticed me. And was afraid. Bogeys don't want to be seen. They want to wreak havoc quietly in your mind. Whispering ill-thoughts in your ear and pulling on your worst fears. They are blights and congestion in the Fabric. Like bad acne.

I had to get rid of it. It was running around _my_ apartment building. And I couldn't have that. Even if it did belong to Mr. Bushwell, and he was a crusty old man, I had to dispel it. I would do him this favor.

I snuck my head around the edge of the wall to get another look. The thing was still hanging there, mindlessly eating at electrical energy from just inside the wall. Waiting for me to pass. As I was about to step around the corner, someone touched my left shoulder.

"Whoa! Easy tiger. What're you doing?"

"Antoinette, I told you a thousand times not to do that!" Antoinette has this creepy way of _popping_ up next to you. "And I'm scoping a bogey…wait, what are you doing here?" I looked at her face: a red glittery crescent-moon decorated her right side temple, dipping onto her cheekbone, long black fake eyelashes fluttered from her top lids, and her lips shined with gloss and that same sparkly red tint. Bejeweled leather arm braces poked their heads out from under her jacket sleeves.

"What? I was working tonight. And _you_ called me. So I came."

"No, I didn't."

"You didn't?"

"Nope."

"Hmm…maybe you ass-dialed?"

"My phone is in my apartment on the coffee table right now."

"I could've sworn…" Antoinette removed her phone from her purse and checked the 'recent calls' list. I was not on it.

"Oh." She spoke the word, the single word, that meant so much between us. She'd received a call from me, or someone, or something, inside the Fabric. What sleepers would call a coincidence. This kind of thing happens a lot between us. She shrugged, "I felt like I needed to be here I guess."

"Maybe you're here to help?" I nodded to the thing around the corner.

Antoinette stepped around me and into the hallway. Then looked over her shoulder, "What?"

I rolled my eyes, "Call your power witch."

Bogeys are strong enough, dense enough, to cross the unseen barrier. Being a Weaver is not necessary. Even normal people can feel them. They call them ghosts. Ghosts are real. But these aren't ghosts. Ghosts are more complex, _complete_ echoes of a mortal life. Or spirits who hang on to the mortal world, not realizing they aren't part of it anymore. Bogeys are annoying bits of crud. Like that forgotten leftover meatloaf you put in the fridge. But unlike the rotting meatloaf, bogeys can influence.

Antoinette growled at me and called her power. A soft vibrating warmth caressed the air. "Oh," she said, side-stepping back around the corner. "Ewh."

"I know right?"

"Miss V, you know I can't do a whole lot inside this building. We're on the third floor. The ground, she's…far away. And there are walls everywhere. Closing us in." Antoinette's voice trailed off. This happened to her almost every time she came over. Almost every time she entered my building. Or any building. Another reason we spent more time at her place.

I could see the look in her eyes. And I knew what she was thinking. That urge that comes over her when she feels trapped by man's constructs. She was ready to shed her clothes, run downstairs naked, and out the door. Into the night and into the nearest woods.

One thing was for certain. My good friend and sister Antoinette Black, will never be able to live in New York City. She'd be arrested for indecency and building a tree-house in Central Park.

Me? I know where the ground is. It's down there. And the Fabric is everywhere. I'm never without my power. I'm never alone.

"All I have is my lighter." Antoinette pulled out her Zippo and flicked the wheel.

"Hey! Put that away. I don't wanna burn down the building just to get a bogey."

"I can't really help you anyway," she said and shrugged. "Not without Newton."

Without our amazing caster, a spell between us would take longer. Things living in the Fabric without a physical form? This was more my arena.

"Right. No problem." I took a deep breath and turned the corner again, with Antoinette at my back. The nasty thing shuffled up the wall a few steps and stopped, ogling me. Daring me to move forward. I did. Two cautious and careful steps forward and stop. I put my hands up in the air, on either side of it. I pulled on the lines. You know when you get a particularly nasty tangle in your hair? And it takes some doing to get the strands free? This was just like that.

It screeched and snarled. I pulled and pulled, the mess of fibers that made up its being began to unravel. It scuffled to the ceiling but I held on. The mass of blue at its center dissolved into finer softer ones. I gave one last tug down, it gave one last shriek, the lines vibrating hotly and smoking. The intersecting lines in the Fabric, where it had been traveling, settling into a powdery mist then straightened.

"See?" I nodded to Antoinette. "Easy peasy." It was easy. But I was extra tired now.

"I guess so. But you're staying at my place tonight," she wrapped her arm under my elbow and pulled me close. "I got the creeps now. I keep telling you to just move in with me anyway. When are you going to start listening to me?"

I smiled weakly at her. "Someday my friend. Someday." We gathered my overnight bag from the apartment, my wet clothes from the laundry room, and left.

_See you around Oscar_. I thought. I was really hoping we'd have another run-in that night. But now, I'd have to wait for fate. If the Fates saw fit to put us together again.


	5. Chapter 5

"Harbingers, harbingers…ah, here we go." I finally landed on something useful.

I'd been rummaging through the Ngao'bliss all morning. First at Antoinette's, then in my office at the back of the library. Normally, Antoinette guards the book. It is a collection of knowledge of our world: incantations, the history of witches–from the Norse to the Greek Oracles to the Salem trials, the rules and structure of the Council of Prophets and covens, all known manifest powers, bindings, everything. But I was searching for something specific. And unlike modern tomes, our ancient text has no convenient index. I was looking for a possible explanation for the last few days of activity from the aether. The strange manifestation of sound and now, vision. Especially given it had now foretold a bogey. Not that the two were necessarily related. But it was itching at me. Unfortunately, there is no section in our book for harbingers. Only historical references to harbinger accounts. The small reference to harbingers in the largest section, that of the Fabric, was not much help.

"An omen, or portent, is a rare manifestation in the Fabric. They are a sign, a psychic signpost. Which can be intended to be warnings. Or simply messages containing energy or information of some future or past event. It is believed they are formed from convergences in the Fabric. Some event occurs and has no proper channel into which it can manifest. The residual energy travels along the lines, looking for an outlet that matches its frequency." I read aloud, my fingers tracing the aged and blessed ink.

"Hey, Virginia, I thought you were off today?"

I startled awkwardly and shut the Ngao'bliss, covering the face of it with most of my forearm. "Ah, yeah Jason, I am."

"Then why are you here?"

I paused. That was a good question. I'd gotten in the car this morning, picked up my coffee, then… Wasn't I supposed to be at the gym right now? For some reason, my car had driven me here.

"I was just doing some research." It was the best answer I had.

"Oh. Is that a new reference book?"

"No. This is the…Walker book of genealogy. A sort of living heirloom." I grinned at him.

"Cool. Can I see it?" He reached out toward my desk, his fingers coming within inches of getting the shock of his life.

"No!" I screamed. "No, I'm sorry. My Aunt Louise is very superstitious. She'd kill me if she knew any non-family members saw this." I had one uncle and one estranged aunt, but no Aunt Louise. I drew the name from the last image I'd seen this morning, Thelma and Louise, playing on Antoinette's TV. And had he touched it, without a coven binding, my digital assistant and computer guru Jason Harel would be waking up in a hospital somewhere wondering how he got a sudden violent onset of irritable bowel syndrome. As well as a host of other nasty ailments.

"Alright, it's cool." Jason thought I was weird, _knew_ I was weird. Just not how weird.

"Did the new DVDs we ordered come in yet?" I asked, eager to change the subject.

"Yep, all catalogued, filed and ready for check outs."

Poor Jason was extra smart and extra fast. I had to work hard to keep him busy. Not a bad problem to have.

"Did you fix the problems reported with the web portal?"

"Yep."

"How about the WorldCat connection issue?"

"Yep."

"The magazine collection upload?"

"Yep."

"Ok. Well…good job."

He simply stood there while I stared and grinned.

"I think I'll go scrub the database," he finally said after a few awkward moments of silence, eyeing me suspiciously as he walked back out to the floor.

"Thanks Jason," I yelled after him and sighed, then put our magical tome away in my bag. It was dangerous even taking it out of Antoinette's house. Which is where it lived.

"Ms. Walker?" I looked up to see a woman standing in the doorway. She was in her late forties, dressed in a conservative polyester blend pantsuit, clutching a handbag and looking nervous.

"Mrs. Scarlatti. How are you? I haven't seen you in a while."

"I'm sorry to bother you. But your assistant said I could find you in your office."

"It's alright. What can I do for you?"

"Can we talk?"

"Sure. Give me a few seconds and I'll meet you up front?"

"No," she said, her voice cracking. "I mean, can we speak somewhere privately?"

I gave her a small nod. "Sure." I quickly cleared my messy desk into a drawer, brushed my spare office chair off. "I'm sorry Mrs. Scarlatti, I don't often have visitors."

"Oh, it's alright." She sat down delicately, still clutching her handbag like a lifeline.

"How is Lilly? I haven't seen her in a while." I asked, not wanting to rat James out.

"Well, that's actually why I'm here." Mrs. Scarlatti patted and smoothed her perfectly styled and frosted hair self-consciously. "She's been sick for quite some time. We thought it was just a flu at first then…" She trailed off. "She doesn't seem to be getting better." She mumbled the last and studied my desk as if it were very far away. "She's so tired all the time."

"I assume you've seen a doctor?" I asked her softly.

"Oh yes! Many times. We've run every blood test imaginable. The doctor has some ideas, but we're simply waiting for her condition to change before taking further steps."

"Mrs. Scarlatti, are you from Texas? I thought Lilly was born in Santa Fe?"

"No, she was born in Midland, Texas. Which is where the Dawsons' hail from. Why do you ask?"

"I recognized your accent. My family is from El Paso. My grandmother used to say she could recognize any southern accent down to the state and city." I gave her a friendly smile.

She laughed. "Oh yes. My mother, Lilly's nana, could nail down a Texan to the zip code." She quieted again. "She was so upset when we moved away. But my husband wanted to move closer to his brother. She passed away a couple of years after we left."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Ms. Walker," she began.

"Virginia will do just fine Mrs. Scarlatti."

"Right. Virginia. You can call me Joy."

"Sure, Joy," I smiled.

"Virginia," she said, taking a deep breath. "I heard that you once helped someone with a problem. Or I am aware that you ah," then swallowed and licked her lips, "participate in a certain…" she stopped and wrung her pale hands together. "Or I had heard that you perform a sort of…"

I frowned. _Where was this going?_ My instincts fired. I probed the threads around her head, around her mind. Tangled thin yellow fibers struggled like snakes trying to get free of their skins.

"Healing art?" I offered her a word, a phrase. Perhaps a safe phrase.

"Yes, I believe so. I can't remember the word Lilly used."

"Reiki?"

"Right!" she yelled excitedly. But her expression, she didn't seem quite convinced. And she was right. It wasn't Reiki.

Now I knew why I'd driven here instead of to the gym. And I wasn't at all surprised to see Lilly's mom. This often happens when spells are performed. If the intended was unable to use the magic, or if wasn't enough, the spell finds a way to work.

"Yes, I am a certified Reiki practitioner. Among other things." I added, confirming, _or not_, her suspicion of the W word. These conversations, they are always delicate work.

All I ever wanted to be was academic, like Pops. When I found books, all I wanted was to be a librarian. But after the accident, I couldn't deny that I was different. And after moving to Santa Fe, I decided to try and make the best of it. I was determined to turn that memory into something beautiful. Something good. Especially given what I could do. How I could see things, living things, differently. So I began studying every kind of healing art I could find. Over the years I learned how different cultures from around the world treat medicine. The body, mind, and soul, like one thing. It appealed to me. I absorbed techniques from Reiki, Light Work, T-Touch, Yoga, Acupressure, and a half dozen others. I even studied martial arts. I also spent some time in the jungle with a famous Shaman. I learned more from him than anyone. Especially about the Fabric.

But at least, with a certification of some sort, it gives people something concrete. So I don't look like I'm waving my hands around the air for nothing. Though these places of power, like Santa Fe, they tend to draw the weirder sort anyway. Painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, crafters. So it wasn't a complete stretch.

I probed her again. Her patterns and colors were better, pinkish and smooth. More calm.

"Well Virginia," she said. I tried my best not to laugh. The way she spoke my name. Like it tasted funny on her tongue. "I was just wondering if uh, you would mind uh…_helping_." She stopped there, squinting and studying my expression. Clearly expecting me to interpret her non-statement statements.

Which I did. "You'd like me to come see Lilly?"

"Yes," she quickly replied.

"Absolutely. I'd be happy to."

Her shoulders slumped, her entire body deflated. "Oh my gosh, thank you." She straightened again. "Can you come tonight?"

My face fell just a centimeter. I had a busy day ahead of me. I still had to pick up Dylan's gift for his birthday tonight. And I really needed a disco nap. But this was important.

"Of course."

"Oh thank you!" She reached forward to hug me, then pulled back awkwardly. She wrote her address on a sticky pad on my desk. "Anytime you're ready. We're home all night," she said and turned to leave.

"Oh Mrs. Scarlatti? I mean, Joy."

"Yes?" She stopped half way out the door, looking over her shoulder.

"Mind if I bring a couple of friends?"

"Of course not," she said and smiled. The smile was stretched and thin, but it broke through some of the tiredness, the haggard lines in her face. So that's something.

…

I rang the doorbell of 719 Rocking Horse Drive, then blew on my icy hands and stuffed them back into my jacket pockets.

"Hey, thanks for coming with me."

"Of course." Antoinette smiled.

"I knew this was coming." Newton replied..

"Really?"

She shook her head, "You know you two should really learn to expect the unexpected. If you follow the spell, you can feel where it's going."

Antoinette rolled her eyes.

"Uh, Newt, can we keep the judgy comments to a minimum right now? I'm tired…and cranky."

Newton's normally ambivalent brown eyes frosted and frowned down on me.

"Sorry I just"

My apology was cut short by our invitee. "Hi there Ms. Wal…_Virginia_."

"Joy, how are you?"

"Well, I'm just fine." Her sweet southern accent peaked. "Thank you so much for coming. Please, won't you come in?"

We stepped inside the warm, but terribly nuclear house. The walls were painted one of those pale pastels, that are probably supposed to keep you calm or something. The living room was off to our left, dining room to the right. With a hallway directly ahead. Covered in framed photos of the family.

"Joy, these are my friends and associates. Newton Hunter and Antoinette Black."

"So nice to meet you." Joy extended her hands, greeting my coven sisters warmly. Though her eyes could not stop drinking them in. Newton looked more or less normal–custom fitted silver-toned jacket and skirt. To me, Newt always looks ready to litigate. Antoinette and I were in jeans and simple cotton shirts. Far more casual. But Antoinette is a lot of woman to process.

"Can I get you some tea? Or coffee?"

Newton's mouth opened to answer then closed just as quickly.

"No, thank you. Is it ok if we go right in to see Lilly?" I answered for us.

"Of course. She'll be so happy to see you. She rarely gets visitors these days. My husband...well, we've been worried sick about Lilly overdoing herself. And these are the _friends_ to which you referred?" she asked of the strange duo. Emphasizing the word 'friends' as if it had some secret meaning.

"Yes," Newton said curtly.

"Virginia is more of a sister than friend," Antoinette said warmly.

I let their small-talk drift over me, calling my power and myself fully into the house, let it speak to me. I looked with new eyes.

Houses are more than just materials: drywall, wood, glass, paint. They are a collection of spiritual energy. Emotional energy. When someone says a house is 'haunted' it usually means energy has become trapped inside. Saturating the walls, floors and very objects in the house. The lines connecting it to the Fabric have become clogged or simply cut-off. But this house looked normal.

We reached a door with 'Lilly's Hovel' written in printed block letters on a sign. I put a hand on Joy's shoulder. "Do you mind if we spend some time alone with Lilly?"

"Oh certainly." She flipped her hair back over her shoulders and smiled tightly, an uncomfortable gesture but she opened the door anyway. "Lilly, honey, your friend Ms. Walker from the library is here to see you."

I smiled as softly as I could as Joy closed the door behind us. It was having a lot of faith and trust in someone to leave them, and two virtual strangers, alone with your thirteen year old daughter. In her case, maybe a fair bit of desperation.

The three of us turned and stood there, taking in the room. A single lamp, decorated with running horses, cast a low shadow on the 'hovel' of a young girl. Board games, yarns, toys, a soccer ball, littered the floor near the closet, while a pile of dolls lay forgotten in the corner near a desk. Lilly was in her bed, turned toward the windows. A tightly clutched large brown teddy bear peeked its head up from over her shoulder.

"Lilly?" I asked softly, walking toward her. Her body turned slowly toward the door and stopped me dead in my tracks. I didn't stop because of Lilly. It was the thing crouching next to her on the far side of the bed. Newton and Antoinette moved up behind me.

"Is that…a clown?" I heard Antoinette's whispered disbelief from behind my left ear, felt the warmth of her fire. She'd already called her power. She could see it too.

It was our second bogey…in days. Not unheard of, but certainly not normal. Unless some societal tragedy was taking place in Santa Fe. Which I was pretty certain there wasn't.

I hate clowns.

But this thing, it wasn't a children's entertainer. White-faced and wide-grinning. It was decay and rot. I could almost smell it. Where there should be smooth fat rosy cheeks, there was discolored pock-marked old white paint, the flesh falling from its bones. Where eyes should be crinkling and happy, there was sagging blackened and greyed lids with crusted crows feet.

"Hi Ms. Walker," Lilly said quietly.

"Hi sweetheart," I said, continuing and smiling down on Lilly as if nothing at all was wrong. I grabbed the stool from her vanity and scooted up to her. "How are you feeling honey?" I picked up a strand of her sandy-blonde hair, removed it from her sweaty face and tucked it behind her ear. I brushed her cheek with my fingers. They came away clammy and cold.

"Oh," she blushed, "I'm just so tired." She stopped and coughed violently. I quickly grabbed a tissue and handed it to her. "Thanks." She wiped at pale pink lips. "Why are you here Ms. Walker?"

I looked into her bloodshot green eyes, "We can dispense with formalities, honey. How bout just Virginia?" I asked, ignoring her question. "Have you met my friends? These are my two best friends in the world. Newton and Antoinette."

They walked forward, Newton smiled down on Lilly, "Hi Lilly, nice to meet you."

Antoinette grabbed a chair and scooted up next to me. "Hi Lilly, I _love_ your room!"

Lilly's energy spiked in her chest, reaching out toward Antoinette. "Oh my gosh, I _love_ your hair! It's _so_ beautiful."

"Oh seriously?! It's so dry right now. You know how the cold weather is so wretched on hair. Is this the new Demi Lovato CD?" Antoinette asked, reaching past me and picking up something from the end table.

"Yeah! It's crazy kewl."

I quietly and inconspicuously left my stool to talk to Newt while Antoinette took my seat.

"What do you think?" I asked her in a low voice.

My body pulsed as Newton's power flared. Her eyes scanned the room studiously. "I think that thing is feeding off her. And the Fabric…it's feeding off it too. Corrupting it in this house. I can feel it. Look." She was right. Vertical lines of energy blinked on and off. Seeming to resist the draw it was pulling. Especially Lilly's. "Someone really hates clowns in this house. That bogey is very dense." When something has no true physical manifestation in the Fabric, the form is coalesced from the viewers. Witches don't always see the same thing. But when there is a strong emotional reaction, the form takes a stronger shape. Maybe Lilly didn't like clowns either.

"Mm hm."

"Virginia…" She eyed me seriously. "You're going to have to bind yourself. And it's going to fight."

I glanced at it again. She was _definitely_ right about that.

"Yep," I sighed. "Time to get to work." We could sit there and cast. Between the three of us, we could dispel it. It would take time. Occasionally, we'll get a request to clear a dwelling, or an area of land possessed of disgruntled or lost energy or spirits. Our Mortora, Faith, is an expert at this. She could probably dispel the thing quicker than me. They're good at that. But she's not here. I am.

"I'm going to stay back here and work," she said. Meaning she'd be casting herself, adding her source to my own as I worked.

"Cool. Thanks."

"She's going to be alright."

I nodded back. I needed to hear that.

I approached the bed again, pulling the chair down a couple feet away from the two chatty Cathy's. I've known Antoinette for almost as long as Newton. We've seen and done some crazy shit together. And we know each other well enough to know our jobs, our places. She was doing exactly what we, I, needed–distracting sweet Lilly. I'd seen Lilly through two formative stages now. Watching her grow from pigtails to preteen. I was taking the thing in the corner personally.

I took a deep breath and centered myself, calmed my breathing. Then called the thread of time. I find that it helps during this kind of work.

Time appears, to me, as a fine bright thread. I'm certain this is the Fabric, presenting a concept I can barely conceive, in palatable terms. Time has no special markers. Only a sense of continuity. Sometimes feeling endless, sometimes circular. But I've found it can be called and stretched. Like zooming in on a moving picture. Slowing things down to get at a still photo.

I spent many hours as a kid listening to Dad talk about all manner of theories on space and time. From time being relative to space, to four-dimensional space. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. But it sounded mysterious and cool. I knew I wasn't speeding up, as time slowed down. Quite the contrary. Sitting there, next to Lilly's bed, as the bubble slowly formed around me, _everything_ felt slowed down. I touched Lilly's foot, encasing us both, up to Lilly's neck. Her mind would remain in the present as I worked.

The world came to a crawl. Lilly's body brightened into fine lines of intersecting pink and yellow lights.

_First things first_. I thought, my eyes drifting up to stare at the clown. After several lasting seconds, it finally noticed me, noticing it. It frowned, its beady small red eyes boring into me. Seeming to say 'how dare you look'. But I did look. It growled and drooled, its wide misshapen sloppily red-painted mouth showing sharp moldy teeth. I did not react, but stared on with a clear intent. To recognize.

When I was a child, I thought my mother was extra weird. But now, I knew these were the kinds of things she saw too. It almost made me feel for her. Almost.

I moved my right hand up, slowly crossing the length of Lilly's body, toward the thing at the corner of the bed. It glanced at my outstretched hand and screamed, gesticulating violently from head to toe. It looked upon Lilly with a feral and desperate hunger, especially her now brightened face. It wanted that. Lilly's innocence and brightness. Newt was right. It _was_ feeding off her.

While it studied her, I quickly covered the last foot of space and touched the lines. Letting my hands be dissolved into pure energy. I hadn't done this serious kind of healing in a while. It felt good…and strange.

The thing startled and stared down at my glowing fingers, wrapped around its skinny blue arm. We were bound together. Its head slowly raised and it studied me again, this time fear passed behind its dilating greasy pupils. It screamed again, this time at me, and struggled in my grip, its orange-curled wig bouncing back and forth.

I held on tight and intoned under my breath, "_You are lost_." I willed more of myself into the Fabric, pulling the thing apart at the most basic levels, my fingers moving wildly. It bucked. It wriggled. It looked up into the aether, looking for help. But I was in charge. It spit at me. My chest mirrored its emotions–sadness, desperation, guilt, sickness.

"_Wholly uncrossed_." It bit uselessly at my hands, trying to sink its rotting teeth into my flesh. The essence, the memory, of my flesh.

"_So get tossed_!" I intoned for the third time, saturating my low words with all my might, with all the emotion and love I had for Lilly.

The screaming thing next to Lilly's bed shook and broke apart like a puzzle. It fluttered, angry and confused…then winked out of existence. The wispy filaments of its being dissolving on the air like the embers of a dull fire.

I took another look at Lilly. She was already brighter. And still talking animatedly to Antoinette. I thought I heard the word 'witchcraft' at some point in their conversation. But their voices were far away.

I don't know how long that thing had been feeding off her, but it was gone now. I expanded a new bubble inside this one, delving deeper into the seconds, looking even deeper into Lilly's body. I reached forward with both hands, seeing darkened areas around her forehead, and pulled the lines of light up from the bottom of her skull. Kind of like re-threading a loom.

I continued the re-threading down the line of her body till something caught my eye. The area just below her belly button, near the back of her pelvic girdle, pulsed with an irritated orange glow. I've done this a dozen times and I've seen this kind of disturbance before. The rotation of energy, combined with the location, was usually associated with a sex problem: an STD or maybe over active sex drive. But Lilly was too young for either of those. I reweaved the lines in her lower stomach and moved the blockage up and out of her body, smoothing the natural flow of light down her spine.

As I was finishing, coming up out of my bubble, I saw a beautiful thing. Lilly's rosy cheeks. The color in her face had returned.

In that moment, I was not a powerful witch, or a coven leader, or even a librarian. I was a healer. It was moments like this that made me look on that day with different eyes.

"Lilly," I touched her hand lightly, "How are you feeling honey?"

She looked at me as if I'd just appeared out of thin air.

"Oh. I guess…ok. I'm really thirsty all of a sudden."

"Can I get you something to drink?"

"Yeah," she smirked, "I'd love a Coke."

"Hmm…are you supposed to be drinking soda right now?"

"Oh, come on Ms. Walker. I mean, Virginia. I haven't had a coke in like, _forever_."

"Yeah, come on, Ms. Walker," Antoinette added.

"Oh man, I should not have introduced you two. Tell you what, I'll see what your mom says."

I left the room spent, but grinning so hard my face hurt, I couldn't help it. "Joy?" I called through the hallway. "Mrs. Scarlatti?" I reached an empty kitchen and decided Lilly had earned a treat. So I popped open the fridge to grab a Coke. I jumped halfway out of my skin as the fridge door shut, revealing a new member to the room sitting at the kitchen table.

"Oh! My god. You scared me."

"Sorry," the stranger mumbled, then went back to his reading. He was wearing a grey business suit, white starched shirt, and a loosened tie.

"You must be Lilly's father."

"Yup," he said. I guessed Mr. Scarlatti was uninterested in small talk. I shrugged it off and made my way back down the hall, figuring maybe he didn't approve of his wife's call for help from three strange women.

I made it to the end of the hall when something strange, something ticklish and cold crept up my spine. I turned around to look at the man again. But Newton stopped me.

"Hey, are we ready to go?"

"Um, just one last thing. I could've sworn I felt something in the…" My voice trailed off. "Hold on." I walked the Coke to Lilly.

"Ok, here you go. Don't tell your mom I got that for you."

She nodded and smiled, popped the tab on her soda, and sucked down a huge gulp. "Oh my gosh, that tastes amazing."

"Wow, you really were thirsty. Do you mind if I borrow your new best friend for a second?"

"Sure."

I grabbed Antoinette and closed Lilly's door, stopping in the hallway.

"Do you…_feel_ anything strange out here?" I asked them both.

Newton answered immediately, "You mean like that?" She pointed toward the kitchen.

Mr. Scarlatti was still sitting there at the kitchen table, looking up at us, and so was the clown. The face, red-nose, blackened-eyes and everything, was perfectly superimposed on top of his.

"What the fuck?"

"I think," Antoinette whispered in my ear, "that our little demon has found its home."

_Of course_. I watched as the thing pulled itself into Mr. Scarlatti's body.

Mr. Scarlatti stared at us as we studied him. At first, there was lust, as his eyes passed over Antoinette, then as his gaze crossed Newton, then myself, a terrible fear and guilt filled his face. He cast his eyes down quickly. And at that moment, I knew.

Horror gripped my stomach, turning it inside out. My mouth was suddenly dry and tasteless. My curiosity and hesitance morphed into anger and hatred. I took two steps toward the kitchen, toward him, before I felt Newt's hand on my arm.

"What do you think you're doing?" Her power slithered into my ear canal and down my throat. Seeming to wrap around my will.

"I…I don't know." I was so damn angry. I turned to her. "Did you see that?"

She stared at me. "Yes."

Neither of us spoke for a few seconds.

"Look, you didn't see what I saw in Lilly." I shook my head in disgust, wishing for the thousandth time that Newt could see the Fabric and manifestations, as I saw them. "But it was there. He did something to her."

"We can't be sure, Virginia," she said.

"I'm sure!" I croaked out, trying desperately to keep from screaming.

Antoinette stepped forward. "Newt," she said. It was a simple statement. Her expression was clear. Antoinette trusted me. Not that Newt didn't. But she was willing to make a leap of faith. And I was positive that man had done something terrible to his daughter.

Newton stood a bit straighter and pulled her leather jacket down. "Alright," she said and licked her lips. "We can't interfere."

Strictly speaking, we're not supposed to cast against others. Unless we're defending ourselves. Sort of a prime directive for witches. But rules seemed ridiculous and paltry to me right now.

"So…do you think she knows?" Antoinette whispered into our trio.

Speak of the devil. Joy chose that moment to enter Lilly's room.

"Oh my goodness sweetie! You're sitting up. And look at that color!"

I sighed loudly and looked at Lilly's open door. "I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe. Why else would she have asked for my help?"

"I suppose it doesn't matter," Newt said. "The mother did ask for your help, our help. So we _can_ cast for her–the mother. Reveal a Truth," she said, decisive and fierce. Antoinette and I grinned at our clever Vala; Newton knows every spell in the Book of Incantations. In fact, she's written more than a few of them herself. She plucked a few strands of her strawberry-blonde locks and placed them in her palm. We did the same.

"Wait!" Antoinette said, racing into the hallway toward Lilly's bedroom. We heard her cooing over something then "Ow!" followed by, "Oooh, I'm sorry Joy!" Then she was running back to us.

"Here," she said, placing a long white-blonde and frosted hair in with ours. "We do it properly." It was one of Joy's hairs.

Newton grinned approvingly then mumbled something low under her breath while I held the hairs and she braided them together. When she was finished, Antoinette pulled out her Zippo and stroked the wheel. The hairs erupted, turning to a single wisp of energy, the Corpalm, hanging between us. We joined hands.

"Reveal a Truth," the three of us intoned.

Newt did not move from his view, Mr. Scarlatti. I don't know if she did it on purpose, I really didn't give a shit.

"_Lies, false dreams, murky waters_

_To these we hold"_

Her low but deep and powerful voice filled the hallway.

I thought hard on Joy, Lilly's mom, just a few feet away in Lilly's room. I focused on the glowing DNA thread between us, as it soaked in the spell. I attached all of my emotions. Love, fondness, courage. Mostly the intent, the instinct mothers feel, to protect their children.

"_Swallowing enough dullness_

_To clog purity, to break bone_

_Hidden from the prying eyes_

_Of the-truth-be-told_

_The truth will out!_

_But you must be bold_

_So rive, rip, rent, tear_

_To pierce the veil of the known_

_To lift walls, to split thick_

_The deception is now un-sewn"_

At the bottom of the third repetition, the spell sealed itself, rushing in the blink of an eye into Lilly's room, binding itself to her mother.

I opened my eyes. The bastard was peeking up at us over his paper. I _really_ wanted to hurt that guy.

"Fuck," I muttered into my palms. "There's nothing? No _anti-perversion_ spell or binding?"

"We can bind his wiener," Antoinette whispered.

"We're not binding his penis!" Newton answered hotly. "And of _course_ there are bindings. We could bind his lust. Bind his tongue. Hell, we could bind his mobility. But, again, he hasn't done anything to us. _Directly_. We could get in big trouble."

When a spell, a binding, is created in the Fabric, it is said that the council can feel each and every one of them. I'm not sure I buy that. But binding negative intent is big no-no. Because it can also be turned against you. Which I learned the hard way in that first year. Several times.

"And none of that will last anyway. None of that will make him whole. He hasn't chosen it. Even binding a more positive spell won't do much good. We can't affect will without someone paying the price. That is the Natural Order of Things. What that man really needs is jail time and some long hours of psychiatric treatment."

I hated to admit it, she was right.

"And we still don't know for sure." Antoinette and I began to protest. "_But_" Newton held up her hands, "…I do have an idea."

"What?" I asked her eagerly.

"Look at him. I can smell the stench of his fear from here. He's scared of us. I'm guessing he's superstitious." She looked only at me. "_You_ stay here."

Newt straightened to her formidable height, especially in heels, and walked down the hall. She removed a pen from inside her jacket and stopped just in front of Mr. Scarlatti. He had already placed whatever he was reading carefully on the table and was watching her. She calmly reached over and snatched one of his papers from the table, making him jump.

"Excuse me?" he said. She was right, I heard his voice squeak.

She flipped the paper over and drew something on it. Then casually and deliberately slid the paper to him. He looked down at it, then up at her. She said something, far too low to hear from down the hall, but whatever it was, Mr. Scarlatti fell back in his chair, onto his ass and onto the kitchen floor. Beads of sweat had broken out over his forehead. She made her way calmly back down the hall.

I went to Lilly's room, said goodbye to her mother. She was profusely grateful. But we knew she had bigger fish to fry.

I kissed Lilly on her forehead. "_May the spirits protect you._" I weaved one last utterance into the line connecting her to the Fabric. As we were leaving, my body stopped of its own accord. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to leave her alone with him.

"We can make her forget. If I tried hard enough, I bet I could make her forget," I said, casting one last look at her door. I knew what mental patterns looked like. And what are memories but familiar electrical charges?

"Absolutely not," Newton said. "That is _completely_ against the NOT. And we don't have the right." I nodded and followed her out.

We had done all we could. It was up to her mother now. And the spell. May it work quickly.


	6. Chapter 6

"So…what did you say to him? To Mr. Scarlatti?" I asked Newton from the backseat of Antoinette's coupe as we made our way up hwy 57 toward town.

"Yeah, he looked like he crapped his pants," Antoinette laughed.

"Not much. Just showed him his greatest fear."

Antoinette glanced at me from over her shoulder in the driver's seat. I shrugged. "Ok. So what did you write then?"

"Again, not much. I'm pretty sure I drew the alchemy symbol for putrefaction. _He_ brought meaning to it. Sometimes fear is a good short term motivator. He'll be thinking of us tonight." Her grin was smart and wicked. "I also know a cop in the 12th. Sometimes he'll do favors for me. I can have him run this guy for a record. Maybe find a reason to checkup on the family."

"Hmm. I guess that's why you're Vala." I could feel her smug satisfaction. That was just fine with me.

Antoinette turned to me. "You really hate clowns don't you?"

"You have no idea." I muttered. But that was not entirely true. It was decay that I feared. Death. And while Mr. Scarlatti might be chased by wart-covered cackling witches in his nightmares tonight, mine will be consumed by running. Me running, from death.

…

By the time we hit Teeny's bar, the party was in full swing. I saw a few coven members. Most of them drinking, happily chatting with each other or mingling with sleepers.

Teeny's is our favorite bar. It's kind of shithole. It's in the basement of old dry cleaning business gone belly-up. The walls are covered in old photos, license plates, random Native American and Mexican folklore…and beer stains. It's too small, too crowded, the floor is sometimes sticky, and the drinks are cheap. It has, as they say, tons of spirit. And we like it just fine.

"Hey, it's the famous Weaver." It was Faith, nursing a cocktail and holding up a grungy wall. Faith is the only Mortora, dead-talker, in our coven.

"Howdy, Faith, how's the dead?" I asked of her third ear.

"Who the hell can hear them in here? Though I think some drunk got shanked in the alley behind the bar. And he's still pissed. And still drunk. Slurs like an asshole. How's the multi-dimensional fabric of spacetime?"

"Busy apparently." I wanted to share my story with her. About the bogey, about Lilly. Faith is a good listener. But it was loud in the bar, and it was probably not my place to share such things.

"Yeah, so's the birthday boy," she said, pointing toward the mass of human bodies. I followed her finger to find Dylan at the end of it. In the middle of the small dance floor, sandwiched by a group of college girls.

"Oh, man. Thanks."

"Sure."

I pushed through the crowd, "Hey birthday boy! Happy Samhain!" It was a week till Halloween. We witches love to joke.

"Sister V!" He greeted me with a crushing bear hug.

"Here you go birthday boy." I pulled the small package from behind my back, "I got you something."

"A present!" He ripped through the carefully, and might I say beautifully, wrapped package on the spot. "No way. DVD box set of Doctor Who?!" He hugged me tightly again. "You know this means we have to burn through these together right?"

Dylan and I have standing TV show and movie dates every week. Which I love. "Yeah, of course. But you know we still have to burn through season three of AHS? It is the _Coven_ you know."

"Why do I need to watch the season with a bunch of hot chicks in it? I've got that already. Anyway, you're gonna love the new Doctor. Well the last one. Before the current one. You know what, don't sweat it. I'm gonna get you a drink. No! A shot. We need shots." His little bubble butt was moving through the crowd toward the bar before I could stop him. He returned moments later with two dark liquid-filled shot glasses on fire.

"_What_ is this?" I asked as he handed me the hot blue glass.

"Fire shots. We're doing it right. We're fucking witches right?"

Maybe Dylan didn't need another shot? But to hell with it. "Well then…to you my brother," I said, raising my voice and my glass.

"To the Witches of Norwood County!" He screamed over the blaring music, drawing curious eyes and ears from nearby bar patrons. Who obviously didn't understand, or didn't care what he said, and instead began yelling encouragement.

I'm not sure if drunk screaming in a crowded bar with a bunch of other drunk people qualified as 'revealing' ourselves, but I shrugged it off. "To the coven!" I yelled with him. Taking the chance on a possible rash or sudden onset of mono.

We blew out our respective fires and downed the shots. The firey whiskey coated my throat all the way down. Though it did have a pleasant cinnamon after taste.

I don't really celebrate my birthday anymore. Suffice it to say that having your father die on your birthday, it puts a sort of damper on the whole thing. So I celebrate other birthdays extra hard.

I let Dylan talk me into one more shot then ordered a Rum and Coke. I tried to remember how drinking adds to my sensitivity. How the room could become a vast network of crawling lights instead of people at any moment. But I think that's the point of alcohol, to make you forget. And I had a lot to forget that day.

"Dance with me," Dylan said, grabbing me by the arm, and twirling us into a nasty mess of elbows and a two-left feet. A particular little brunette who'd been eying Dylan gave me a nasty look, as did the rest of her girl gang.

"I think your new friends are a little jealous."

"Of course they are. They got nothing on you girl."

"You have a sharp tongue Mr. Ford."

"That's what the ladies tell me." He grinned lasciviously.

"How old are you today? Fifteen?"

"Yeah, that's hilarious. Thirty-one smartass."

"I know how old you are." I grinned. "Where's the ol' ball and chain?"

"Hey, hey! Don't marry me off just yet. We've only been dating for six months. She had to work tonight." As he dipped me around, I caught him staring at Newton.

"What?"

"Do you think her dick is bigger than mine?" he asked in a slur into my ear.

I choked on a giggle and the swig of Rum and Coke in my mouth. I wiped my chin with my shirt and looked over at Newton. She was busy chatting up a gorgeous lanky redhead who was wearing jeans so tight I could make out her preference in underwear. And I knew exactly how big Newton's 'implements' were. "Do you really want to know?"

He paused, grinned, and shook out a hard no. "Nope." We laughed and danced some more.

Some people say that men and women can't be friends. Intimate friends. But I disagree. Not that Dylan and I haven't had our go at it. We got halfway into the act at my apartment one night, then realized it was feeling more like a weird inbred porn. While Antoinette is the sister I never had, Dylan is the brother.

Besides, every time Dylan relaxes, this happens. What was happening now. His eyes drifted to Antoinette. Hungry, beseeching eyes. "Oh my god. You two. You have the worst timing of any two people I've ever known." Dylan is off-limits to me for several reasons. The most important one being Antoinette. She won't say it, but she's got it bad for him too. Girlfriends just know these things. So my brother Dylan, he will forever be the undiscovered country.

"Shut up," he said, spinning me around.

Now only if the two of them could manage to be unhitched in the same span of time.

At some point, I lost Dylan. I ended up alone on the dance floor. Me and two dozen strangers. The DJ was spinning a combination of house music and Mexican rock. I don't really know. And I didn't particularly care. I have to admit, there are a few things that are much cooler as a witch. Sex, of course. And dancing.

I could see music now. Music connects us to different planes in the Fabric. And dancing, _real_ dancing, is like falling in love. You know it when you get there.

I closed my eyes, let the music become part of me. Soon, I could feel my mental patterns changing to match the vibrations in the air. And then I was gone. I was no longer Virginia Walker. But some musical frequency version of her. I lost all sense of time and space for a while. It was perfect.

I felt a hand on my hip. The hand was warm and tender. I turned to see Antoinette. "Hey!" I said through slow and heavy lips.

She gyrated and slithered, wrapped her strawberry-colored cotton butterfly-sleeved arms around my torso and pulled me in. Without so much as a thought, a little bubble of time popped out from my center, encircling me and my sister Antoinette. The music became a dull throbbing chant for both of us as we danced. A rush of soft wind snuck up my back as Antoinette's power flared. The two of us swayed with the music, and rocked with the small buffeting winds, her winds, driving us together.

"Are you ok?" she whispered in my ear.

"Yeah," I slurred.

Her deep purr of a laugh reverberated in my ear. She grabbed my arms and pushed me back. "You need water."

"Boo." I pouted.

She pointed toward the bar. "Now." Then pushed me through the crowd.

She ordered a bottle of water from Missy, our most favorite bar keep in Santa Fe, and shoved it in front of me. "Drink." I downed half the bottle.

"Happy?" I winked a slow wink.

"Not yet. But I want you to finish that. Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back."

I gave her two wobbly thumbs up. As soon as Antoinette left, someone took her place. He was a handsome Legolas type, long sandy-blonde hair, crinkling playful eyes, with a sly grin. Perhaps a bit too young for me, but cute as all hell.

"I was watching you out there. You're a great dancer."

"That's very kind of you to say. But completely untrue."

"Ah, you're one of those women."

"And what kind would that be?"

"One that can't take a complement." His grin, only seconds ago charming, was suddenly distasteful.

I frowned. "Well, I like to think of myself as a realist."

"Well, realist, can I buy you a drink?"

"Oh, no thanks. I'm afraid I've been put on a water diet."

"Ah come on, one drink. One drink isn't gonna hurt anybody right?" He laughed and scooted a few inches closer to me.

Now I was annoyed. I let my power pulse slightly. His libido patterns were as busy as his thoughts.

"Look uh…"

"Frankie."

"Frankie, I'm sure you're a nice guy, but I'm all done for the night."

He closed the distance between us, and all I could think about was my experience a few hours earlier. I could still see Mr. Scarlatti sitting at the kitchen table. And this guy, his breath was suddenly washing down my chest as he bent forward, invading my personal space. His eyes roamed around my body like they were looking for treasure. Or by sheer will he could undress me. My breathing picked up. He was too close. He was speaking, leering, but I couldn't hear him. The alcohol, combined with my increasingly charged emotional state, made the world bleed into the lines.

My eyes followed his pint of beer as he raised it to his lips. The messy crystalline patterns in the glass glimmered and sparkled. A few of the strands shifted and moved under my fascination. The glass suddenly cracked on top, splitting down the side, dribbling beer down his t-shirt.

"Whoa!" He reeled back and reached for a pile of napkins.

"Oops," I said to myself but laughed.

"Well if you don't want a drink, maybe I can get you something else," he said, wiping at his chest.

"Ha!" I laughed. I couldn't help it. This guy wasn't phased. I wasn't angry anymore. But I was done messing around. "Look, I'm not interested pal."

"Come on, you don't even wanna know what I have to offer before you shoot me down?"

"Uh…not really."

He started blabbing again. This wasn't working. I could move. I could eyeball Dylan to have him rescue me. But I'm not a helpless woman. I'm a witch. And I was here first dammit.

"_Orlando Bloom you're not_

_And your man musk stinks of rot_

_Stupid horny tricky little elf_

_Please go fuck yourself"_

The utterance was spoken too low for him to hear. I watched as it passed from my lips to his essence. It wasn't nice. But neither was he. I don't like people who pretend. Pretend to be nice. Pretend to be your friend. It was the best that I could come up with on the spot. It was not a spell, and it would wear off soon.

Mr. Rude stood erect, and smacked his lips. As if tasting something vile. "Fuckin' lesbian," he muttered and walked away.

My intention behind the utterance was to repel. And he was. Repelled.

"Actually, that's _bisexual_!" I yelled after him, feeling quite pleased with myself.

I looked down at my water, finished it, then ordered another.

Then the room, _it_ was suddenly too crowded too.

_Air. I need air._ I thought decisively then fought my way through the crowd and out into the night. The bitterness of the fall air hit me a few seconds later. Sobering me a little. I walked to the end the of building, then turned the corner. Buzzed people don't like to stand still.

As I shuffled along the edge of the parking lot, studying the darkened store fronts across the street, it happened again. The air became still. The rush of cars on the nearby freeway, the howls of party-goers from the bar, began to fade into the background. I stopped and listened.

The ping of a fingernail on a coin grew in intensity. As if it was coming from far away.

_Pop!_ It finally burst and vibrated a high-pitched bite into the night air. Sound and movement returned to the world. It was the same sequence, the same sound. And the same flash of light blinked into existence across the street. It hovered roughly five to six feet off the ground.

I looked left, then right, then crossed Pen Street to get a better look.

As soon as I'd crossed the street, it was gone. I looked up and down the blocks. Nothing and no one.

_Maybe it was a reflection in the shop window?_ I thought, staring in the window of a lamp store. Maybe it had been a coincidence. But there was the flash again, this time toward the end of the street.

I walked toward it, all the way to the traffic lights of St. Francis Drive, crossed the intersection, only to have it wink out of existence. Again.

I stood on the corner, looking down the intersecting streets. In one direction, there was only dust, and the freeway in the distance. In the other, businesses and a few industrial buildings. And as it was probably somewhere past one o'clock in the morning, it was quiet and restful. I stood there for a few minutes, waiting for it reappear. Just as I was deciding to turn back, the thing popped up, not fifty feet away from me, toward the north part of the road.

I waited. Feeling like I was chasing a dog. A dog that _liked_ to be chased. It was late, and I was not in the mood to chase aether objects. But it remained there, hovering.

I took two cautious steps forward. It did not move. I took two more steps, quicker. It did not move. I covered the remaining distance casually. Coming to stand not a few feet away.

The thing in question, was not a blob of light, like I thought, but a symbol. A glowing twirling symbol.

It was round, like a coin, roughly four to five inches in diameter. The center glowed with a hot lavender light. Off that light, six spires shot out to the edges. Each of those spires held their own glowing smaller centers, two per spire. A sort of metallic grey, a soft tangerine, a sharp yellow, jade green, a deep cobalt blue, and finally at the top left, a royal purple. The thing rotated slowly on its own vertical axis, seeming to allow me to examine it, as if it knew I was watching. The spin picked up speed and the thing began to glow brighter, until it cast a brilliant light show on the sidewalk. The light show began to move.

I don't know how I knew, but I knew it wanted me to follow it. So I did.

It led me through parking lots and weed covered fields. We passed a cemetery at some point. As we crossed deeper into darkened areas of the neighborhood, I realized how cold it was, and how lost I was. Nothing looked familiar. And I had left my purse and phone in Antoinette's car trunk. All I had on me was some cash. Maybe it was a dumb idea to follow a hovering unknown symbol into an unknown neighborhood?

Just as I was deciding to turn back, to retrace my footsteps, the object, hovering near the edge of darkened single-story building, slowed and blinked out of existence. I frowned and waited. And then I heard it. A low rasping of air. A moaning. A growling.

My heart leapt up into my throat. I waited, stood there shivering and listening to the moans, trying to decide what to do. Or if whatever had led me here was deciding what to do with me. The sounds grew stronger. I licked my dry lips and hugged the cold brick, sneaking up to the corner. I held my breath and poked half my face around. There was nothing there. Just an old rusted steel green dumpster.

_Hey wait a second, I'm a witch._ If I got in trouble, I could call the lines right? Change things? Affect matter? "Alright Virginia, time to man up." I pulled my words and my courage up around me and stepped out of the shadows.

"Hello?" My voice squeaked in the darkness. "Is someone there?"

I made the nearest corner of the dumpster and heard a shuffling from the opposite side. I stopped abruptly and came near to impaling myself on the corner of the dumpster.

"Shit." I picked up my right foot. Shiny viscous liquid covered the entirety of the heel of my shoe. I took it off to get a better look, leaning out to get at a ray of streetlight. A drop of red fell onto the pavement below. Blood. I'd slipped in a pool of blood. My own blood cooled to match the temperatures around me. The shining pavement showed a pattern leading into the shadows around the opposite side of the dumpster. Where the sounds were emanating.

This was a bad idea. I should run the other way. As fast as I can. But something pulled at my center. I couldn't turn around now.

I followed the fresh trail as it led around the dumpster, stopping at the feet of a man, his hands and face as red as the bottom of my shoe.

We stood staring at each other until his face morphed into a sort of madness. Not mad, like I took his parking space mad. But insane mad.

"Can you hear them coming?"

I looked left and right. "Hear who?"

"The demons, the ghosts, they're coming for me."

_Whoa._

I let my sight flare. The area around us was more or less empty. Though the lines in the Fabric vibrated thick and hot.

"Sir, what are you doing back here? How did you get here?"

He fell forward and grabbed me by the shoulders. "They can see into my mind. They know who I really am. I can't hide from them. They're everywhere!"

"Sir, there is nothing here. Only you and me."

His fingers dug into my muscles. His emotions took me down. I felt his mortal fear for my own. His terror. His sadness. His hopelessness. This was awful.

I took a deep breath. "Let's just calm down." Something occurred to me. "Sir, have taken anything tonight? Are you on any medication?" I asked him, as calmly as possible.

His eyes squeezed shut. "I've done terrible things. Awful things. They know. They can see it all. I'm sorry. Why can't they leave me alone."

I looked around again. The most interesting thing about the back of this building was…him. There was nothing else here. A pile of cardboard boxes, bits of trash.

"We're sorry. We didn't mean to do it. Why can't they just leave us alone!"

"There is nothing here sir, you need to just calm…wait, who is _us_?"

For some reason, this particular question got his attention. "Us. Yes us. My…my brother."

He let go of me and stumbled back behind the right side of the dumpster. I followed him cautiously around. There was another man lying against the wall of the building, his face a broken mess. Had he not had an obvious human form, I would not have recognized his face as such. His right arm hung from his shoulder at an unnatural angle. Like it wasn't attached anymore. His shirt was ripped open, everything hanging off of him in tatters, covered in fluids that should be inside, not out.

"Oh my god." I rushed forward. "What happened?" I didn't want to touch him. I couldn't even tell if he was still alive.

"I…I don't know," the man said, his voice cracking, heavy and confused.

Whoever he was, he checked out at that point. He slumped and slid down the wall next to his brother, his eyes disappearing behind a wall of terror.


	7. Chapter 7

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining. The wind was quiet. An excellent day for a street fair. The annual Fall Into Winter festival. From Alameda to Palace Ave and Peralta to Gasper. Four city blocks in downtown Santa Fe of southwestern, Native American, Mexican and 'other' wares–art, pottery, sculptures, native dress, books, jewelry. And the most important thing, my favorite thing, the food. Carts upon carts of native and local delights. Chile frito pies, tapas-style burrito bars, sweet chile corn fritters, empanadas filled with everything imaginable–pickled and grilled vegetables, sauted and basted meats, slow-cooked meats, and pastries for blocks.

And we had our very own culinary coup d'etat'.

"Peace, love, and sopaipilla's!"

"Oh Lydia. What did you do? These things are unbelievable."

Now, no one has to twist my arm to get me to eat a flaky fried sweet pastry confection. But what Lydia Hammer does to foods is heavenly. And unnatural. No really. It is unnatural. She bakes not just with love, but energy directly from the Fabric. Into her foods. She's a Phytora. Her gift is with plants, trees, all things green. But I swear, she deserves her own label in the Ngao'bliss. Like 'Magic Baker'. Obviously I don't contribute to these things. And shouldn't.

Antoinette and I took the first pastry with grace and patience. Licking each magic-soaked and sweetened finger slowly. Then assaulted the following two.

"Girls," Lydia chided us. "Slow down. You're going to sprout wings if you eat too many or too fast. And remember, every sopaipilla you eat takes money out of a needy child's piggy bank."

Antoinette and I finished shoving the third puff in, then blushed guiltily. Like every year, all of the proceeds from the sale of Lydia's magical confections were for the orphanage outside of town.

"Sorry Lyd. They're just so good," Antoinette said, whining.

Lydia blushed and shook her head, her long dangling feathered earrings mixing in with her hair. "Do you like them?"

I nodded violently.

"I added my own special almond cream," she said and giggled. "There's a sort of special surprise in each one! And I made an extra big batch for my kids out at Forever Found."

"Well, Lyd, bless your heart. I know you love those kids out there. But I'm going to steal you one day, make you my personal chef."

She blushed again.

"Hey, Virginia," Antoinette nudged me in the ribs. "Isn't that?" I turned and followed her gaze. Mrs. Scarlatti, Joy, was across the street. She was smiling and talking to someone at a yarn booth. The crowd finally parted to reveal it was Lilly. Antoinette and I shared a look. We then scanned the surrounding area for _him_.

It had been five days since our visit to the house. I'd been thinking on Lilly in every spare moment. I'd dialed their house number, after looking it up, several times. But never pressed 'send'. Antoinette and I got drunk one night and talked about how to entrap the husband into an alley, feigning an attack on a fellow witch. Sometimes being petty is all you have.

"I'm going to go say hi," I said.

Antoinette licked the remaining almond cream from her fingers, her hazel eyes carefully neutral.

I crossed the crowded fair street, letting my power rush out ahead of me. I wanted to see Lilly in the other spectrum. I just had to.

Threads of red, orange, and yellow danced in fluid open-figure eights up and down her spine. Like they were supposed to.

"Hi there," I greeted Lilly first.

"Ms. Walker!" She launched herself at me. I hugged her tightly then held her back.

"Lilly, you look wonderful."

"Thanks." She blushed and studied the sidewalk. "I wanted to go back to school this week, but mom says I have to wait till next week."

"Well, moms know best. I'm just glad you're feeling better."

"Do you like our bracelets?" She held up two colorful friendship bracelets.

"Oh, these are for you two?"

"Yes," Joy replied proudly, her eyes twinkling at Lilly. I took an extra moment to study Joy too. There was something different about her demeanor. She looked older. Happier. Younger. Wiser. Sad. She caught me staring at her.

"Lilly honey, stay here for a moment," she said, motioning me a few feet away into the open fair street.

"How are you Mrs.," I stopped, forgetting we were now on a first name basis. "Joy, how are you? It's good to see the two of you out enjoying the day."

She paused nervously then clasped her hands. "Virginia. I just…want to thank you."

"You're certainly welcome. Though, I'm not sure we did much."

She looked back up at me. "Yes, you did," she said, her eyes delving deeper into mine this time. "Lilly and I are staying at my girlfriends' house for a while. Until I can get a new place for us." This was the best news I'd heard in a long time. She played with the bracelet around her wrist. I let the silence drag on.

"I'm getting a divorce." She finally mouthed the words. I know they were difficult. And I know, _I felt_, her guilt, her shame. And her relief.

I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it just as quickly. What was I going to say to her? Nothing seemed appropriate. That she had to leave her husband, that she most likely loved, for assaulting their daughter? And that I was sorry?

"I'm so sorry." Yeah, that was the best I could do.

"And I'm pressing charges against him. I feel so awful. So angry. I…I should've known. How did you know?" The question was whispered and desperate.

I looked over at Lilly. "Does it matter?"

She looked back over her shoulder too. "No. I suppose it doesn't." She hugged me. I was surprised. But hugged her back, fiercely. She stepped back to Lilly as if nothing had happened. I politely ignored her few tears.

I turned to leave mother and daughter to their new day when Lilly called to me. "Ms. Walker?"

"Yes?"

She glanced over her shoulder at her mom, who was now busy with the booth artist. Lilly did something strange. She touched my elbow, motioning me to the side, out of earshot of her mother.

"Ms. Walker, I wanted to ask you something."

_Uh oh_. Whatever she wanted to ask me, about her father, about her mother, about why I had come to visit her, I could not answer. It would be entirely inappropriate.

"I…" she licked her lips, "I want to be a witch," she said, lowering her voice and leaning into me.

That was _not_ what I was expecting. In any way. I couldn't help it. A silly grin split my face.

"Lilly, you can be anything you want for Halloween."

"Ugh. Ms. Walker, I _know_. I know what you did for me. I know what you did for us." She nodded over her shoulder at her mother. Lilly's young beautiful sea-green eyes were terribly grown-up at that moment. And I didn't want them to be. Innocence is precious. We can never get it back. "I know what you are. I haven't told anyone. Not even Mom."

I stood a little straighter and asked, my voice unfriendly and uncompromising. "How?" I needed to test Lilly.

"Antoinette."

Of course. Antoinette is about as discrete as Honest Abe. That night in Lilly's bedroom, now I remembered. The conversation was there in my head. Lilly had asked Antoinette how we knew each other. And Antoinette told her. We were best friends, and sisters of a different sort. We were coven sisters.

I glanced over at Antoinette. She looked normal. I hadn't noticed any changes, any obvious consequence for breaking the secrecy binding.

"What you did for us was…_so_ amazing. I want to do that. For others."

I nodded my head at her, "Lilly"

"_Please_ Ms. Walker," she interrupted me. "I want to be a witch. I want to help people. I feel…bad. But strong. At the same time you know?" I did know. "I want to help other girls like me. Help them not be afraid." Her little face held all the seriousness you'd expect, and quite a lot more than I'd ever had.

It was a lovely thought. But…

This moment was a crossroads. For me, and for her. Some witches are born. Some are taught. And some, like me, are shocked into existence. But, eventually, every single one of us is _drawn_. The Ngao'bliss says that there is a force in the Fabric that draws things together. The one pertaining to witches is simply known as the Draw. When we're drawn to the same cities or towns. When we're drawn to the same restaurant or bar for a chance meeting. These meetings are not chance at all. This is that Draw at work. It happens to all of us at some point. Like I was drawn to Santa Fe. And this may be Lilly's moment. Her Draw.

"Lilly," I lowered my voice and stepped closer, "you're too young."

"I know."

I scrunched my brow at her, "How do you know?"

She shrugged, "I don't know. I just do. Is it eighteen?"

"No. It's sixteen. No witch joins a coven until they reach the age of sixteen. That rule cannot be broken. There are even things a witch cannot witness or participate in until they are eighteen."

She nodded once and blinked twice. "Ok."

"And…we'd have to talk to your mother. Before you come of age."

"Ok." She seemed perfectly all right with my answers.

"Ok." I answered back, sounding surprising.

"I'll be fourteen in five days! Only two to go!"

I had to laugh. "You know what, just focus on being a young lady right now. And doing well in school! And we'll talk."

She smiled brightly and sighed. "Ok." Then burst into a full run across the street. She screamed at Antoinette. They hugged tightly. Then Lilly was headed back toward her mom.

"Oh!" She stopped and turned. "I'll see you next week at the reading hour Ms. Walker!"

"Sure." I nodded and waved at Lilly as she joined her mother. We'd never had such a young entrant. I'd have to talk to Newt. Lilly's mother was not a witch, so Lilly would really have to wait those two years. Before she experienced anything 'witchy'. At least from us. And Antoinette and I really needed to have a chat about 'oversharing'. But I felt too damn good to feel bad. Besides, the fact that Antoinette had suffered no consequence meant Lilly probably _was_ a witch.

I reentered the crowded street, glowing from the inside out. I spotted Faith two booths up from Lydia. She was also pimping her witchly services at the festival. Her hand-painted sign read 'Psychic Readings'.

"Faith, since when are you a Prophet?"

She looked left then right and leaned across her table. "You know how hard it is to find dead people? They're off frolicking somewhere, or reincarnating, or drifting about like it's a goddamn mall up there. They don't come when they're called." She looked completely put out by this fact.

"So, I talk to whoever's around. Get some fun facts, make people feel like they're getting their money's worth."

I squinted at her. "Isn't that sort of…cheating?"

She opened her mouth to answer but was cut short by a gang of imps. Lead by James.

"Ms. Walker! Did you see Lilly is back?"

"Hey! Yes I did. Oh my James." Every year the 7th and 8th graders perform Jarabe Tapatio at the festival. All the kids dress in traditional Mexican And James looks silly handsome. His black suit was certainly traditional. As well as his white blouse and cravat. But his pants were studded down the side and topped with glittering red lace trim. A large black sombrero hung from his back. And his black boots were studded decoratively around the toe and up the side.

"You look _very_ handsome."

He flipped a long strand of shiny black hair out of his face. "Thanks."

"Are you coming to the maze this year Ms. Walker?"

"I'm afraid not, Marcus. I wasn't asked to chaperon this year."

"That sucks. Hey, Ms. Walker? Is _that_ a new chaperon?" his emotion at my absence was dubious, his question was rushed. I realized then that every boy, including James, was studying Antoinette as she approached us.

Oh boy.

"She's not a chaperon. She's a friend of mine."

The five young men straightened their shirts, smoothed their hair, and adopted, what I assumed was supposed to be, a macho stance.

"What's up." Marcus announced himself to Antoinette.

She surveyed the team of swaggering young men. "Wow. You guys look choice. Like the real deal."

Marcus grinned sideways. "I'm Marcus. I don't believe we've met."

"Yes, we have. A few years ago. But you were much younger." She looked at me.

Much younger indeed.

"Well, I'm all grown up now." The gang of boys at his back sniggered.

I frowned.

"So, you're not a chaperon?"

She nodded.

"Does that mean I could get a personal es"

"Ahem!" I loudly cleared my throat, interrupting him. I wasn't his home room teacher, or any teacher. But I was sure his parents wouldn't want him drooling all over strange women…and behaving in an ungentlemanly fashion. I was from the South. And in the South, children address adults with respect. Especially young knaves to women.

Marcus looked at me. "I was just gonna ask if"

"Mmmm" I cleared my throat again, staring him down.

"But I"

"Uh uh." I gave him one last warning.

"Ugh," he sighed, disgusted.

I was about to ask James when they were hitting the main stage when the boys became eerily quiet. Staring at something over my shoulder. I turned to see Newt standing just a few feet behind me. I hadn't heard her approach.

"I thought you were running errands today?" I asked her.

"I had to deliver something to Faith," she said, sparing only a small glance for me, but studying the group of young men, one by one.

They studied her equally hard. Carefully. As if she were an alien. Or an unidentified species.

"Hey, Ms. Hunter." James had met Newton several times at the library.

"How are you, James?"

"I'm pretty damn good."

"James," I chided him.

He blushed but Newton was unshaken. "It was a reasonable and honest answer." Newton nodded down at him. She sauntered off as the boys stared after her.

"Hey, hey! You boys get along and stop bothering these beautiful women!" A lanky blonde-haired man yelled after them, shooing the young men back into the fair crowd.

"Hi, Richard. How are you?" Richard Littleton was one of the teachers from Santa Fe Junior High. He taught math to seventh and eighth graders. And he was the gayest straight guy I'd ever met.

"Virginia!" he said, kissing my cheeks on each side like we were French. "Oh my goodness, I'm in a real pickle here. Would you please do me the biggest favor ever?"

"Um…sure."

"One of my parents cancelled for maze duty. And I need someone out there tonight. You don't have to do anything extreme. I just need a certain number of adults per child. You know where the corn maze is right? Down off eighty-nine?"

I guess I was on maze duty after all.

"Yeah, I know where it is. The Mathers Farm. I can help out."

"Oh thank you!" he kissed my cheeks again. "Just show up at six at the front gate, they'll give you a special badge. And when are you going to say _yes_ to me? You're starting to give me a complex young lady," he said, smiling bright and winking.

Richard had asked me out a half-dozen times. Call me old-fashioned, but Richard's lovely effeminate nature was a bit too confusing for me.

I grabbed Antoinette's arm. "Sorry Richard, I'm a taken woman."

He put his hands on his hips, and blushed. "You," he simply said, thanked me again, and ran off.

"You're welcome," Antoinette whispered in my ear.

"Sorry about that."

"No worries, Weaver Walker. I'd lez out anytime for you. Now," she said, rubbing her hands together like a mad scientist. "Are you ready to get your eat on?"

"Gimme two seconds Elemental Black. I need to find a bathroom."

"Boo! Well, hurry up. We still have a lot of eating to do," she said after letting her eyes wander down a line of food stalls.

Unfortunately, it took me ten minutes of wandering around to find a single port-o-potty. And after a few minutes in the hot, stuffy, skanky confines of the green box, I was certain that hell had no bathrooms, only port-o-potties. If I believed in hell. Which I don't. In general, witches don't. And my mother's own assessment of 'those convenient fairy tales for the morally susceptible', was always stuck in my head. Claire, mother–she's got opinions on just about everything.

I dumped half a bottle of hand sanitizer in my palms, resisting the urge to do a full-body swab, and looked back up the street to the flurry of activity. Street musicians, artists, dressmakers, jewelers, Native American, Mexican, African, they all blended together to form a colorful quilt of humanity. I took a step toward the Cathedral, where my sisters were waiting, when something stopped me. A twanging in my subconscious.

I looked back up the fair side of the plaza, the St. Francis Cathedral on the left, people sitting on the grass under the oak trees, then down Cathedral Place. I scanned the adobe store fronts, all busy and happy of the pedestrian traffic.

"Oh no." I finally saw it. Clear as day. The slow rotating symbol at the corner of Cathedral Place and Palace Ave, near the edge of the park, directly in front of the 'City of Santa Fe' sign. I cautiously approached the hovering object.

The sound had not foretold the object, like it had last week. But there it was again. The round glimmering edge with six spires and the glowing lavender center. The thing rotated in clockwise motion on its own axis. Slow enough for me to get a good look. Again, like it wanted me to see it.

I looked up and down the street, around the plaza. No one else was looking at it. Or me. A couple moved up the sidewalk to pass me. As they came near, I caught the woman's eye, then looked at the symbol. Then back to her, and it. She noticed my movements and turned her eyes toward the sign. Then looked away quickly after sparing me a friendly grin. She didn't see it. And the thing was actually casting a shadow, reflecting off the metallic yellow surface of the hanging sign. I watched as the words 'Cathedral Park' darkened and muddied as it changed positions. I got my phone out of my purse and texted Antoinette.

_Need a few more mins._

It was daylight. How much trouble could I get in, on a sunny day, and downtown no less? The fact that I had my cell phone this time made me feel ridiculously safe.

Besides, over the last few days I'd been thinking on the two brothers I'd found. I was certain that I'd been led to them, to help them. I was also certain that the one standing had beaten the other. Though I had no idea why. But who knows, it's family. And family can be real hell.

The thing glowed brighter as it picked up vertical speed and ferocity. Then it was on the run again. It dashed across and down Palace Ave, and waited for me at the next intersection. I followed and turned the corner, as it turned. We bobbed along Otero, going south, for two blocks, until we hit Paseo De Peralta. The thing turned right onto the block, moved about half way down the street and stopped. It slowed its vertical spin again. It seemed to be pausing, maybe trying to tell me something. Paseo De Peralta was mostly stucco houses and a few businesses. A rise of hill crested up into the sky on my left. But that was it. No people, no cars.

I decided to try something new.

I cast my power out hard. Calling the thread of time and slowing my perception until I found the seconds elongating. A gust of wind blew over from the west, bringing with it bits of autumn. The falling leaves up Peralta slowed their descent to a virtual crawl. I reached out and plucked one from the air, rubbing my fingers along the yellowed dry spine. Then crushed it, letting the pieces slowly continue their journey to the ground.

But the thing was gone. The symbol that had so quickly formed, blinked out of existence. I crossed the street and walked down the block where it had disappeared. There was absolutely nothing there but the dry dusty hill to my left and a short rust-colored brick wall and arch. I noticed something on the wall, a bit of graffiti.

"Death coms here!" It made me laugh. Some kid was trying to be cool but forgot to be smart. If you're going to deface public property, at least do a spell check.

I looked at the words again and the arch. The only thing I couldn't see was what was over that hill. I walked through the arch and onto the open paved stairs. A large space opened up at the top. Nothing much to speak of. Lots of the same dirt, lots of brush, with the occasional cactus or pine tree. But it was hard to miss the point of the path, leading to the Cross of the Martyrs. I knew more about the Cross than what it looked like. I'd been meaning to visit it for years.

The cross itself was basically two white iron joists sitting atop a cobblestone platform, surrounded by paved brick. But it was unmistakable and undeniable at almost twenty-five feet tall. The austereness of the Cross spoke for itself.

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was a bit of local history. During the long years of the Spanish colonization of New Mexico, and other southern states, Native Americans, especially the local Pueblo tribes, were devastated. Wiped out by means of murder, foreign disease, drought, fighting other local native wars. But the most insipid means of devastation was friendly colonization and the new religions. The tribal shamans were seen as using dark magic or sorcery by the church. A few years before the revolt, forty-seven shamans from the native tribes were taken by the governor at the time, a Spanish tyrant. He imprisoned and tortured all of them as examples. Killed half of them off.

Imagine what they would've done to us. The first witches to suffer from invading countries, monarchies and religions, were the Norse. Being a Seer and Prophet in the Norse clan societies meant respect and power. She was called on to use her powers to aid in everything from childbirth to waging successful wars. And like the Viking, she was badass. They did kick ass for a while, even against the hordes of Roman armies. As for the rest of witch history, specifically throughout the rest of Europe and North America, women that were killed for practicing this so-called 'sorcery', were not actually witches. Most of them were simply still worshipping in the old ways–multiple gods, the seasons, nature. Most individual witches were too smart to get caught. They saw the writing on the wall.

But the shamans of the Pueblo Revolt had help. The local tribe leaders staged a rescue of the remaining medicine men from their imprisonment in Santa Fe. One of those imprisoned native shamans made his mark on history–Po'Pay. After he was liberated, he went on a five year mission to rally support from regional tribe leaders to stage revolts in Santa Fe and parts of central and northern New Mexico Spanish occupied pueblos. A lot of Spanish blood was spilled. Most of the remaining Spaniards fled to my hometown, El Paso, TX. But the colonization, of course, continued. The Spaniards returned years later to this area, as did the French, and the English…and everybody else.

But still, you have to respect the man's luster for life and liberty. He was a single voice, that for a time, united many.

As I was reading through the plaques on the monument, something caught my eye. A man off to the right, running straight at me. Before I could get my wits about me, he tackled me. Throwing us both out of the cobblestoned monument and onto the unpaved landscape.

The air left my lungs, he rolled us over and straddled me, pinning my arms with his. I was so surprised I merely stared up at him as he stared down at me. His eyes bespoke of terror, panic and madness. The quick shifting of his pupils and intensified examination of my face foreshadowed something _bad_. He saw something that he didn't like. It was all I could do to squiggle and get my arms up in front of my face before he started pounding on me. Whatever he saw that upset him, apparently it rested solely in my face. I held my forearms in a tight grip, letting them take the blows. And then, just as suddenly, he was gone. I lifted up and tried to focus through all the dust bunnies.

There he was, laying in the dirt, being attacked by a woman. No. She was saying something to him. I shook myself off and stepped cautiously toward the two. My ears were still ringing.

"Lionel! Lionel! Baby are you alright?!"

_Is he alright?_ I thought rudely.

As I reached the pair, he screamed and threw her off. She rolled into the dirt and brush, finally stopping and coming to her knees. I rushed over and helped her stand as she coughed up her own clouds of dust.

I turned to him. "What is your problem?"

"Baby, it's Jany. What's wrong? Why are you doing this?" she asked, still holding onto my arm.

The man, who I could clearly see now, was no older than Dylan. Maybe in his early thirties. He had a handsome face, square jaw and slight stubble. His hair was neatly styled in that short shaggy fashion. His clothes, though dirty, betrayed an attention to detail in dark stylish jeans and blue tight-fitted t-shirt and distressed brown motorcycle jacket. He sure didn't dress like a psycho. But his eyes were still crazy.

And that same foreboding stare with which he had fixed on me seconds ago, was solely directed at the young woman next to me. They dilated, shifted and frowned, got redder and puffier by the second. He studied her from head to toe, as if he'd never seen her before.

"What's wrong with him?" I asked her, without taking my eyes off him.

"I don't know. He's acting like he doesn't know me. Lionel?" she said, her voice squeaking. That seemed to make it worse.

He rushed forward, kicking up dust, then stopped abruptly. His hands and fingers splayed wide, his body crouched in front of us.

"Ok, ok, let's just relax," I said. "What's going on buddy?"

He swayed and jumped forward again, making us jump back. It was a weird kind of standoff. He shuffled to the right, we shuffled to the left. He shuffled to the left, we to the right. He took two steps forward, we took two back. He was not interested in me anymore. He watched her carefully. Gleaning strange things from her movements. His face telegraphed his next move, and he was on us before I could complete our turn.

It was a complete mess. A tangle of arms, legs and torsos. I somehow ended up back in the dirt and looked up just in time to see him punch, what I assumed to be his girlfriend, square in the face. She reeled back onto the ground onto her back. Blood spurted into the air from somewhere on her face. He punched her again. She turned over and got to her knees, began crawling away. I crawled forward myself and started pulling at his arms to slow him down, yelling at him to stop. He was speaking, yelling, in Spanish. So rapidly I could only catch a few words. Not enough to know what the hell was happening. He finally noticed me again and swung at my face, hitting my ear instead. I rolled back over and grabbed at my head, my ears ringing all over again.

Ever had your ear punched? It fucking hurts. Now I was pissed.

I reached down and cupped as much dirt as I could fit into my palm and yelled, "Hey!" He turned. I threw the dirt in my hand, hitting him square in the face. I felt satisfied some of it landed in his eyes.

As he yelled and fell back, I pushed myself up and went for the woman. She had blood pouring from cuts over both eyes and her nose…it gushed and hung sideways.

_Run._ I thought. "Run!" I screamed in her face and grabbed her arms, lifting an almost dead weight of over a hundred pounds into the air. She got her feet under her. I spotted the side street with cars and people. This was a good thing. We needed help. I half pushed/pulled her along toward the tree line and street. We were not ten feet from the sidewalk when her hand slipped out of mine as the blood greased our grips. Then he was on her again. Yelling, screaming, shaking, hitting.

This was getting us nowhere. How often do I forget I'm a witch? Too often.

But I was not calm enough to pull my own power. And I, we, didn't have time for me to think on how I would use it. Instead, I pulled on the memory of Newt's power. How it felt, how it entered my ears. Then infused it with my own. "Hey!" I yelled, coming to full my height, a few inches below him but feeling considerable. "Hey!" I yelled louder this time, pulling harder on the memory of my coven leader. He paused, froze in space and time. His ears and mind clearly processing the dredges of a Siren's gift. He blinked a few times then looked down at the ground. Though he was not looking at his girlfriend. He was studying something new, something shiny. A gun.

The two of us shuffled forward at the same time. But he got there before me. He picked up the revolver and pointed it at the woman, then me. Then her.

Where in the hell had that gun come from? One of them must've had it. It must've fallen out during the last scuffle. I didn't know guns very well. It was small, but I positive that bit of data was unimportant. If I got shot, it would still hurt like hell. He shifted to a double grip and began screaming again.

"Sacar de mi cabeza! Sacar de mi cabeza!" he yelled over and over. His hands trembling, his feet shuffling toward me then her.

As my hands came up, an instinctive reaction to a gun, my adrenaline spiked to terrifying levels. I could feel it, coursing through my veins, my nerve endings hot and wide, my lungs pumping twice as fast. The world began shifting, bleeding into lines and patterns.

Trees. Cactus. Dirt. Human.

I tried not to stare at him. But he was holding a damn gun. And his thought patterns were of the ugliest I'd ever seen. Almost too interesting not to look. They swam in confused circles, making wide arcs out toward his girlfriend mostly. I flinched as they rushed at my head, trying to pull on my own threads. What the fuck was wrong with this guy?

The longer I stared, the more the lines bled. The brighter they became. I tried to clear my mind, use some of the calming and focusing techniques I'd learned so long ago in the jungle.

'_Your emotions are married to your power, Virginia. Steady your storm and mastery will follow.'_

The voice in my head was Alberto, my mentor. Alberto was a shaman, famous for his intricate knowledge of the Fabric. Specifically, how to interpret and work with the threads and manifestations. A year after the accident, I sought him out. As have many witches. His lessons, his advice, had carried me through many difficult times. But right now, I couldn't hear his advice. All I could hear was the beating of my own heart.

I looked over to the nearby tree-line, focusing on a small pine. The patterns were simple and elegant. But the more I looked, the more they changed. The tree began shedding its needles. Until half the evergreen was lying in a brown spent pile around the bottom of the trunk.

_Oh no._

Every once in a while, a _long_ while, I don't call my gift, it calls me. The pulse of the Fabric, the very nature of life, fills my subconscious and dominates my senses. This is not a good thing. We witches should always have control of our power. And Newton Hunter is the only person on earth who knows this about me. But Lionel, whoever the hell he was, was about to find out too.

I tried to focus on nothing at all. The air. The sky. My mind zoomed in on the patterns in the air. Molecules of varying weight and shape. I remembered Dad's models, filling every corner of his office at the university. This was the real version. Electrons clearly binding with each other. It was so interesting. So beautiful and perfect. As I looked, magnetized by the microscopic patterns of movement, molecules began to be reshaped. Electrons pulled apart. The ground rumbled. I was changing things that weren't meant to be changed. I was my own worst enemy. The observer in the observer effect. The harder I looked, the more the patterns changed.

Even my own patterns. I could feel the life inside me. I was connected to all of it–the ground, the air, the plants, the trees, the water deep underground. One continuous motion of matter and energy. Connected to layers in the Fabric I could barely sense or see.

And there was the most interesting pattern in my immediate area, Lionel. I could sense his heart too, beating from the many feet between us. It's perfect rhythm of pumping. Blood rushing in one side, and pushed out the other. His arteries and veins, expanding, contracting. All the valves fluttering like the wings of an excited butterfly. A perfect organic machine. If I looked at him, it was over. I would probably kill him. Rearrange things in him that would shock the most jaded of surgeons.

_Please don't let me kill this man._

I tried one last time, "Lionel! Put that gun down!" I yelled, calling on Newt's power from across downtown Santa Fe.

Through the pounding in my head, I felt his patterns shift. Become calmer, quieter.

"Lionel?" I tried again, my eyes still focused on the dirt at my feet.

I did not hear Lionel respond. Instead, I heard a low muttering of voices. Like whispers on the wind. And the panic in me, it began to recede. The tide of fear and anger was replaced with coolness and calm. I took a chance and looked up. A woman was standing next to us, not ten feet from both me and Lionel. Her hands were raised to the sides, her mouth was moving quickly. Too quickly, too low.

Whatever was happening, I was feeling better. I looked over at Lionel. He looked better too. His eyes glazed over. The gun in his hand dropped into the dirt. As did his body a second later.

"_Sound body, mind and soul._

_Pour your worries into these words, _

_Without thought, unwind, unfold _

_And let the tides control._"

I could hear her now. It was a spell. It was a witch!

Lionel settled like the sky after a passing storm. He took a deep heavy breath then noticed his girlfriend. "Oh my god, what happened? Jany…what happened to you? Are you alright? Someone call an ambulance!" He scrambled over to her and began sputtering and squawking incoherently, as if he'd just joined the party.

_Welcome back, Lionel._

"What is your name? Your full name?" she walked forward and asked him. The air around her trembled with power. She had to be a Siren.

"Lionel Reyna. My name is Lionel Reyna." He turned in the dirt to look up at her, his voice far away.

"Good. Good, your name is Lionel Reyna," she said. "Lionel you are calm and relaxed."

"I am calm and relaxed."

"Lionel, you are going to take a nap now. A quiet restful nap. A peaceful well-deserved nap."

"Yes, I am tired."

_God, I need a nap too._ The thought drifted up from my subconscious. I shook it off when I realized it was her.

Lionel Reyna laid down next to his girlfriend and closed his eyes. The woman walked over to me, extending her hand.

"Need some help up?"

"Oh! Please." I dusted myself off. "Who _are_ you?"

She smiled. It was easy and relaxed. Almost a grimace. Like a happier Mona Lisa. "Aislinn Veragard," she said. "You must be Virginia."

…

We called 911, then sat and waited for the police and ambulance. As I sat there in the cold dirt, watching Lionel hold his girlfriend and cry, it occurred to me that something truly weird was happening. He had acted like he didn't know her. And I could've sworn I heard the name 'el Coco' being screamed, by him, several times. As far as I knew, el Coco was a figure from Mexican fairy tales. A sort of boogeyman creature used by parents to keep their children from doing naughty things.

The ambulance took both of them away, Lionel and his girlfriend. The EMTs probed me a few times, kept asking if I felt ok. It was annoying. I felt fine. The police just probed.

"So…this man, Mr. Reyna, stopped attacking his girlfriend suddenly? Because you asked him to?" Officer Stanza asked.

"No. He passed out." I lied.

"Ok." He scribbled into his notepad again.

"And why were you taking a walk up near the park? So far from the fair?" His tone was carefully neutral.

"That's a good question," a snarky voice said to my right. I turned to see Sandra Cravitz. Another teacher from Santa Fe Junior High. I'd met her a few times on her trips to the library. Sandra does _not_ like yours truly. I think she suspects I pray to Satan and sacrifice chickens…or small children. Or something like that. I don't know what her problem is. She's probably just another nosy bored woman.

"Isn't this the second time you've _happened_ upon a violent act? In the last week no less?"

Wow. News travels fast in a small city.

"And you would be?" The officer asked.

"Mrs. Sandra Marlene Cravitz," she said, haughty and self-assured.

I glanced at Officer Stanza. Who returned my glance. "Is that true?"

"Uh," I hesitated. I shouldn't hesitate. I didn't do anything wrong. "Yes. That is true."

"And this prior incident?"

"A few days ago. Downtown. I _happened_," I carefully used that word as well. "Upon a guy and his brother. I was out drinking and," I stopped, realizing how stupid and conspicuous I was about to sound. "Took a walk outside Teeny's."

Sandy pursed her lips. Satisfied and smug.

"Oh yeah. I remember that call. Guy was hysterical," the officer said.

"Tell me about it."

"Two hysterical men involved in crimes in under a week? Sounds very…odd." Sandra eyed me.

Officer Stanza peered at me again. "And you didn't know either men?"

"Virginia has done nothing wrong," Aislinn said, taking one calm step forward. "She saved that woman today from much worse injury. Possibly death." That wasn't entirely true. It was Aislinn that had saved her, us, in the end.

I wanted to laugh. Sandra visibly recoiled in a sort of disgust being just a few inches closer to Aislinn. Even Officer Stanza took an extra second to look. Aislinn had long wavy brown and mahogany ombre locks. That sort of two-toned style that's so popular. She wore a simple black cotton dress that wrapped around her torso and draped in front. _Really_ draped. I could almost see her top ribs. But it wasn't distasteful. It was confident. In fact, if I were still a sleeper, I would suspect there was something very different about Aislinn. She looked like a witch. Smelled like a witch. Wore her magic on her sleeves, so to speak.

"No officer," I said, interrupting his mesmerized stare. "I didn't know them either. I guess I'm just lucky."

He stifled a laugh. "Right. Ok, so one last time. He was screaming, chasing her. He then attacked you. You tried to reason with him. You grabbed her and he gave chase?"

I nodded.

"And you didn't understand what he was saying?"

"I caught a few words here and there. That he didn't recognize her. But no, not really. He was speaking too fast."

I left out most of his burble. Especially the 'el Coco' bit. The man was clearly out of his mind.

"And you heard the screaming from street level and came up to assist?" he asked Aislinn.

"That's correct officer. But Virginia had already talked him down."

"Ok Ms. Walker, Ms. Veragard, that's all for now. If you remember something else, please call this number." He handed me a card. "But for now, this appears to be a case of domestic violence."

"Thank you officer."

Sandra opened her mouth to say something else, then quickly followed Officer Stanza back down the hill.

Aislinn shook her head. "I don't think she likes you."

"You think?" I grinned, shaking my hair out again. It still felt grimy.

Aislinn glanced over at me. "I don't remember Santa Fe being this exciting."

"Me neither. Hey, wait a second, that's right! You were Vala here before Newton."

"Many moons ago, yes. When Newton held your position. She was my Vinstri."

"Wow, I only missed you by a year or two then." Newton had only mentioned Aislinn once in ten years.

"Yeah, I missed the famous Weaver by a number of months apparently."

I swallowed and blushed.

"When I saw you back there, I knew who you were right away." She pointed at my face, her finger tracing a line back and forth in the air, her eyes zooming in on mine.

"Oh! Right. I forget. I guess I stopped noticing it years ago." That wasn't entirely true. Not in the sense I said it. But more because I stopped looking years ago. At some point, my blue eye became a constant reminder of that night. Of what I'd lost. "It was the left one. It was brown. It turned blue after…"

"After your dad died."

"After the accident, yes."

"Is uh, Lydia still around?" She politely changed topics, seeing my expression pale. "I miss her cupcakes more than Santa Fe I think. Though my ass is grateful for the respite."

I laughed. "Yeah, she's still around. I know what you mean. I was just stuffing my face with her goodies not an hour ago. She's down at the fair you know? You should say hi."

"I will. Speaking of the festival, I have to get back downtown. Walk with me?"

"Oh my god! Me too." Antoinette was gonna be furious. After my frantic and weird text messages and ignoring her phone call.

Aislinn and I made our way back down Peralta. She caught me staring at her in my peripheral vision.

"Can I help you with something?" she asked, her voice teasing.

"I'm sorry, Aislinn. It's just that, Newton never really talks about the old days. You're a Siren?"

"Yes, for the most part, my power is in my voice."

"You're not a lawyer too are you?"

She laughed. "Oh no! I'm a plastic surgeon."

I stopped mid-step and took another look at her. Aislinn had crystalline blue eyes, with an almost albino tendency. She had hints of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Her cheek bones were high and prominent, but not overly so. Her heart-shaped lips were lightly glossed and red. She was definitely an attractive woman. Though I would not have guessed at her profession. I suppose I don't know what plastic surgeons are supposed to look like.

"What?"

"Oh! Goodness, I apologize. I didn't mean to stare," I said, picking up my pace.

"That's ok. Staring is ok." She smiled.

"It's just…you're sort of obvious."

She laughed hard and smiled even harder.

"I mean, us witches, we're supposed to be hiding or something right? Living in the shadows?"

"Mm," she chewed on her bottom lip. "Hiding is for fearful people. You're not afraid are you?"

I shrugged. "I suppose not. Hey, I want to thank you again for helping me out back there. I apologize for not saying something. Recognizing that you were casting."

"It's ok. You were a little preoccupied."

"Man, no kidding. What was wrong with that guy anyway. Not to be nosy but, what were you doing up there? How did you know? Don't you live in Colorado or something?"

"Arizona. I took over the coven in Tonto County when I left Santa Fe. It's a much different game. Managing a coven that big."

"How many?"

"Eighty-five last I counted."

"Wow." I had trouble keeping up with thirty of us.

"But I still have family here, my sister. She's a sculptor and these festivals are a great way for her to attract new clients. She actually lives just up the street from the cross. But you know how artists are," she laughed. "She forgot her planner this morning, so I walked back up to the house to get it. When I was walking back down, I could feel it. Something pulling me up that hill."

"Huh, lucky for us."

"There's no such thing as luck, Virginia. Forgetting her planner must've been part of my plan today. And yours."

Aislinn may not be a lawyer like Newt, but she sure sounded like her.

"I knew someone was in trouble. A witch was in trouble."

"Well, however you got there, I'm glad you showed up."

"You were doing just fine. But I have to ask, I don't understand one thing."

"What's that?"

"Why you didn't use your power. If the rumors are true, not that I believe everything I hear, then you have control over matter. Over time. Who knows what else."

"That is a good question isn't it."

Truth is, maybe I don't use it enough. Maybe I don't experiment. But this gift came at the expense of my father's life. I don't have the right to go around treating it like a toy.

Our footsteps echoed through the empty residential streets between us and the fair, emphasizing the quiet.

"It's complicated," I finally said.

"Fair enough. It's really none of my business anyway."

"I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be rude."

"It's ok, I might feel the same way. If I had been through the same thing."

"What do you mean?"

"I can only imagine what's it's like for you. Magic has been in my family for generations. The women in my family have been natural witches for as long as I can remember. I hear that your mother is a very powerful witch. But if I hadn't been born with it…to have my power wakened on the back of such a tragedy, I would feel…conflicted I suppose."

"Yeah. A little," I said. Though that was pretty much spot on.

"You know, I lost someone very close to me too, many years ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

She sighed. "Thank you for that. It was a long time ago. But I can still feel it, you know?"

I did know.

"And death…death leaves you with nothing but memories. Sometimes you find yourself wondering if even those were real. Sucks doesn't it? When you're a victim of the Fates."

I don't hate a lot of things. And I certainly treasured words. But those two words…victim and fate. They rubbed at my insides like sandpaper. I was stubbornly holding on to the idea that I had ultimate control of my environment and my destiny.

"I'm a lot of things Aislinn, but I'm no victim." I was getting angry again. And I didn't know Aislinn very well. I picked up my pace.

"I'm sorry, Virginia. I didn't mean to imply that you were."

"It's ok."

"And not to mention having a bunch of old women saying that the event was _blessed_ and _foretold_," she said after a few minutes of silence.

Now she sounded like me. We laughed at her terrible impression of the group of ancient prophets.

I peeked over at her. "Do you believe what they say? What we say? That every event has a purpose, has a place in the tides?"

"Do I believe that using a particular type of toothpaste over another will affect the rise or fall of mankind? No. I believe in choice. Like my mother used to say, we all get shit instead of pie in life from time to time. But we must make the best of our circumstances."

I took another look at Aislinn. What a terribly grounded thing for a witch to say. I liked it. I agreed.

"Hey, wait a second, weren't you summoned for the upcoming council seat?"

Aislinn looked too young to be summoned. If I had to guess, she was barely in her late-thirties. Then again, Newton was barely _into_ her early forties.

"Yeah. Ironic isn't it?" she smiled. "I take it you _don't_ believe then?"

"Believe what?"

"In fate. In the ripples. In the tides."

"I believe in the present. I believe in being a good person. I believe in doing good things, helping others, when you can. Simple stuff I guess."

I may be a witch. Famed for my crazy woo-woo powers. But I'm still a person. And I still had my own beliefs. No one could take that from me.

"Do you?" I asked.

"Well, they probably wouldn't have summoned me for the seat if I didn't," she smiled. "I do believe in the search for meaning. In our greater purpose. I do believe in the greater ripples, yes. We are working toward something."

"And what would that be?"

Her smile widened. "I don't know yet. But when I'm chosen for the council, I'll be sure to tell you."

I laughed easily and shook my head. "You can keep it, thank you very much."

We walked in silence until we reached the cathedral. She stopped at the corner, "This is my stop."

"Hey, thanks again."

"I'm glad to help a fellow witch anytime. Look, Virginia," Aislinn carefully studied my face, as if debating whether or not I was sane. "I know we don't know each other very well. But have you spoken to your father since his assent?"

His 'assent'. His death.

"No. But I have tried."

"Well, my sister is an incredibly gifted Mortora. She could probably find him. She could find Elvis at a speed metal convention."

I laughed.

"If you had such a need to talk to Elvis," she smiled.

"That's a nice offer, Aislinn. But I don't know."

She pulled a slip of paper from her pocket and scribbled something on it. "Here. This is my number. And the address of our house in Santa Fe. If you change your mind."

"Thanks."

She walked away; I looked down at the paper in my hand. I'd had Faith, along with a handful of other Mortora's, search for him many times in the last ten years. I finally gave up after a while. It was too heartbreaking. But maybe it was time to try again. Maybe…

"Virginia." A familiar voice boomed behind me. I couldn't help it. I cringed a little.

Newton and Antoinette were walking up Cathedral Place. Probably going to find me.

"Newton. What are you doing back here?"

"Antoinette called me."

Antoinette shrugged helplessly.

"Why? I'm fine." I purposely did not move my forearms. They'd taken a beating. And they were sore.

"Was that?" Newton asked, spotting the back of Aislinn's firey tips as they turned down Washington Avenue.

"Aislinn. From the coven over in Tonto County."

"I know where she is now." Newton's expression was carefully neutral.

"Wasn't she summoned for the Western seat too?" Antoinette asked. "What is she doing here?"

"She's visiting her sister. And she saved me. She saved us."

"What happened?"

I told Newt and Antoinette everything. With the exception of how much trouble I'd had controlling my power. But Newton, she's one tricky witch. Her intuition is sharper than a razor. I was betting she already knew.

"So…this symbol, do you know what it is? Have you seen it before?" Newt asked.

"I don't know what it is. And I looked through the book for any reference to it or harbingers."

"Wait, wait. So you _have_ seen it before?"

"Ugh." I hadn't told Newton or Antoinette about the symbol or weird sounds coming from the aether in the past week. "Remember the other night? I saw it then too. Before I ran into those two brothers."

"Man, you're not very smart for a smart person," Antoinette said.

"You're not helping."

"Sorry." She shrugged again.

"Why didn't you tell us? Tell me?" Newton asked, her voice tinted with seedlings of irritation.

"I guess I forgot."

"You forgot. Then why didn't you call when you were out there? Ask for help? Use your power? Why are you so stubborn?"

"I did! And I'm not stubborn, I'm independent!" I yelled then stood back as two senior Mexican women passed us carrying arms full of pottery. They stared over their shoulders at us until they reached the street.

Newton leaned into me and whispered. "Virginia, I nearly ran into a Starbucks after you called my threads."

Oops. I'd forgotten about that. Trying to call on Newton's power on the hill. "Sorry. I got desperate."

She sighed and stood straighter. "Can you draw it?"

"Draw what? The symbol?"

"Yes."

"If you think it will help. I think so."

"Just humor me."

I drew the concentric circles around the outer one. The six spires with colored dots, extending out from the center. I described the various colors. Newton insisted I describe each color as it appeared in the circle, to its respective placement in a spire.

"What do you think it means?"

"Pretty. But I've never seen it," Antoinette said.

Newton studied the image hard, her significant intellectual wheels turning. "This looks like the Wheel of the Year. The symbol representing the seasonal festivals. We gave up following the Wheel about a half century ago. Though a lot of modern pagans still use it." She ran her fingers over the concentric inner circles and spires. "But the posts, the spires are incomplete. There should be eight, not six. And these breaks in the lines, the dots, I've never seen that."

"What about the colors? They don't seem to be in a pattern either."

"I would say they almost resemble the Hindu chakro, but the darker, almost black, at the top is throwing me off. Traditionally, that would be red. To represent grounding, stability, being in a physical body. And what about the seventh? It could be the center, or the edges…maybe these _are_ the chakras and these colors are different for a reason. I don't know."

"I don't get the sense that this…_thing_, is dangerous. I also couldn't tell you what it is, or where it came from."

"So that's it?"

"That's it."

"Alright," she said decisively. "I'm taking you to the house."

"Antoinette's?"

"_My_ house."

"No. No! I can't leave. I promised I would chaperon tonight for corn maze duty. And my word means something. I have to show up."

Her dark eyes fluttered. I wasn't sure if she was considering bespelling me or whacking me over the head. "Then…I will accompany you during this _corn-maze duty_. You can't go anywhere by yourself anymore."

"What?! Newton, I'm a grown-ass woman. I don't need parental supervision _or_ a security detail."

"We have to treat these incidents like an attack on all of us. When one member of the coven suffers, we all feel it. There's no I in team, Virginia."

My ginger skin reddened even further. "I swear Newton, if you say somethin' like that one more time."

"I'm sorry," she actually laughed, her voice softening. "Look, truth is…I'm worried about you. You're not just my Vinstri, you're my friend. And you know, it can't hurt to have the power of three at your command. Besides," she glanced around us. "I feel like I need to be here."

"Fine," I finally huffed.

If Newton got a 'feeling', it was best to proceed with caution. Besides, she was right. Something weird was happening. To me. These events, I couldn't believe they were coincidence anymore. Or if there were more to come.


	8. Chapter 8

"This corn is…wrong."

"How can corn be wrong, Antoinette?"

She reached over and plucked an ear of corn from the nearest stalk. "Look how small this ear is? And watch this." She peeled the husk away on one side and touched the yellowed corn with her fingertips. The kernels under her fingers began to shrivel. She turned her hand over, a tiny stream of water ran up and into her palm.

"See this? This is barely a drop of water. My palm should be almost full." She rubbed the water in her hands.

"I don't think this corn isn't grown for eating. It's cut down and grown quickly so it can be used in the fall for the mazes," I said.

She nodded and we continued. Two girls rushed by us, their white Jarabe Tapatio skirts swelling up behind them showing their jeans underneath. They screamed, laughed and skidded on the dirt path, kicking up clouds of dust as they spotted a new unexplored corn row. Then disappeared into the field.

"Why are they allowed to just run off? Won't they get lost?"

I smiled at her. "That's part of the fun. It's fun to be scared…to be lost."

"Mm, if you say so."

"You don't think so? Fear generates a hell of a lot of energy you know."

"Yeah, so does love. And lust." Antoinette waggled her perfectly arched brows at me.

"Yes, but fear has a stronger spike," I said. "Like a voltage versus current thing. Though love does have that longer lasting current."

"Which makes it a superior emotion," she replied haughtily.

I looked over at Antoinette. Two thick threads of love swam around her body, moving in crisscrossing patterns up and down, creating bright flashes of light as they intersected. Love, pure love, is the most powerful force in the Fabric. I smiled at my friend.

"In the long run I agree. It has greater staying power. But emotions are just that, emotions. Not one has more value than another."

"True. But we can choose to imbibe in certain emotions, more than others. Hope, desire, passion, affection, hunger!" she growled in my ear.

I brushed the shiver from the right side of my face. "Mm hm, but some people find other emotions just as _titillating_." I carefully used that word just for her. "Fear, terror, tremor. Some people get a thrill out of things that go bump in the night." _Like me and Dylan._ I thought to myself. Antoinette is more of a romantic-comedy girl.

"You know, I find it funny that you have such a grasp on things I don't. And that your affinity is touching the aether. The purely spiritual. You'd think it would be the opposite. That I would delight in all things dark and mysterious. And you the light and sublime. Why do you think that is?"

I shrugged and nodded over my shoulder, "Ask the brain." We giggled.

Two boys this time, belted past us, skidding at an intersection, kicking up dust and disappearing onto another path ahead.

Antoinette shook out her long auburn locks. "So, why am I here?"

"For the company." I grabbed her elbow. "And apparently," I looked back to see Newton casually strolling at least twenty feet behind us, observing the corn rows as if they held ancient and nefarious secrets. "I can't be left alone anymore."

"She's just worried about you. So am I after today. You looked really shook up V. That guy could've killed you. And she's right, something weird is happening. What the hell is this symbol that keeps showing up? Does it mean something to you?"

I shook my head, "I told you, no. Not a thing."

"Well, I'm not letting you out of my sight from now on." She pulled me in closer. "At least, while you're out in public," she said, giving me a warm smile.

A high-pitched scream rent the air from somewhere in the maze to our right. _One of the kids_. I thought, a rush of panic flooding my system.

I broke out of Antoinette's grip and ran down the path toward the sound. Ignoring Antoinette and Newton's screams for me to stop.

I turned the first corner I found and skidded around the next. Turning left and following the sweep of open path up to the right. I could hear Newton and Antoinette somewhere behind me beating the dirt and still screaming for me. "Over here!" I yelled, but not stopping. I ran in a circle for what seemed a full minute then paused to get my bearings.

"Hello? Is someone hurt?" I yelled up over the stalks. A squeal pierced the air from somewhere directly ahead. I broke into a run again, following the path as it twisted and turned deeper away from the setting sun. I stopped at a crossroads, listening to the distance echoes of laughter, straining to call my power. I was saved the effort as I heard a nearby bubble of voices. I took off through the stalks, ignoring the painful slaps and scratches of the thick-razored corn stalk leaves. Finally emerging onto a nearby path.

"Oof!" I stumbled onto the path and into two girls. I instinctively grabbed the nearest one's arm. I recognized both of them from my friend Alicia's class. "Are you alright?" I visually inspected both of them, finding nothing bloody or broken.

"Franko came out of nowhere and threw that disgusting thing in my arms!" The brunette began yelling and pointing at the ground. I looked down on the path to see a frog, dragging one of its legs.

"You're such an idiot! Why did you throw it? You could've just set it down or dropped it. You broke one of its legs!" The other yelled back at her.

"It's gross and slimy! And it's not my fault! Why are you screaming at me?!"

"Girls." I interjected.

"You're such a girl! It's just a frog. Why are you so whiny?"

"I'm not whiny! Why do you have to be so bossy?"

"Girls!" I finally yelled along with them.

They both stopped and stared at me.

"Do you remember me?"

They both nodded violently in the affirmative.

"Good." I cleared my throat. "Now. You are…Emily?"

The brunette nodded.

"And Constance?" The other crossed her arms and nodded once. Good enough.

"Emily is right, Constance. Setting it down would've been the more humane action. BUT," I raised my voice seeing her protest coming, and eyed Emily, "Do not call your friend an idiot. It's not nice." Emily blushed. "Constance was surprised. And she reacted. And Constance, it's just a frog dear, not a grenade. Think before you act next time, ok?"

They both cowed and pursed their lips. "Now, please resume your fun," I said and pointed down the path.

"What're you gonna do with it?" they asked.

"I'll figure out something. Now go please." By the time they reached the end of the row, they were already laughing again.

I blew out a breath. "To be that young again." I sat down in the dirt, grabbing the frog as it tried to drag itself away from me into the field. "Alright buddy, let's see what we have here."

I called my power, letting the lines bleed. Then found the thread of time, out there, in my mind, choosing a few seconds over many. Mr. Drags-a-lot became quieter in my hands. I opened my palms and looked deep into his right outstretched leg. Fine fibrous lights shot down both sides from his hips. Billowing out in the center then tapering toward the knee. Except the right side. A small area between the lower thigh and joint was grey and listless. I'm a librarian, not a biologist. But it appeared one of his major thigh muscles had become detached at the tendon. Though the shape still looked right: fat and tapered.

I cupped the little guy into my left palm and opened my right. I reweaved, _reimagined_, the patterns of his tendon. The millimeters of grey area near his knee sizzled, sparkled and bowed upward. As if the incident were simply reversing itself. Making his leg what it was a few minutes ago: whole. It was a teensy thing, that frog knee, but it took a lot out of me. What can I say, it's been a long day.

By the time I was finished, beads of sweat were pouring down my temples. Finally feeling the 'click', I released the bubble in a rush and set my left hand down. He seemed to hesitate, then slowly pulled his leg up, and off he went. Flying high and disappearing into the corn.

"You're welcome!" I yelled after him.

I dusted myself off and stood, "Well, that was fun. Time to head back…" The words hung on my lips as I felt the first wave of disorientation. Looking left and right, I couldn't even tell you which way the girls went. "Shit," I said, low and tight, knowing they were still kids poking around every corner, then felt my phone buzzing in the back pocket of my jeans.

_Ooops._ I had four missed calls, three from Newton, one from Antoinette and a text message from Newton–"_Are you ok? Where are you?_"

For a person off-put by children, she had a serious maternal streak. "_I'm fine._" I wrote back. 'smiley-face' "_Was just some pre-teen hijinks. And…are you seriously asking me that question?_" As one of these girls would say–duh. I was in the maze…somewhere. "_I'll meet you at the exit._" I texted back. There was no point in trying to find them.

I looked up at the sky. The amber twilight glowed off to my left. That meant I was facing north. And though we could find each other by heading north and south respectively, it would add unnecessary minutes to our journeys. And the remaining light was fading fast.

I knew If I kept walking in one direction, I was bound to find one of the telltale arrows pointing the way out.

My phone buzzed again. "_OK._" Came Newt's terse reply. I know that wasn't at all what she wanted to say.

I chose a direction and picked up a brisk pace. Actually enjoying the exercise and relative silence that the surrounding ten foot walls provided. After a few minutes of more twists and turns, I came across an arrow. Feeling confident that I was back on track, I allowed myself to relax. Finding that the simple removal of visual distractions was peaceful. I could see only row after endless row of green and yellow corn stalks and dusk-purple skies.

I came to another narrow crossroads in the path and spotted another arrow. I turned the corner, only to be blown back by a gust of wind and dust. I stopped and coughed up a bitter bile of dust, spitting it out onto the path.

"Yuk." I wiped the grit from my eyes and continued my trek. It took only seconds for the strange change of mood to start. Unfamiliar and unwarranted emotions bubbled up from my core. Depression, disquiet, and tickles of fear began gripping me from the inside out. Suddenly the stalks seemed full of malice. I had an uncontrolled need to be free of the field. I started running.

But the further I ran, the more the feelings increased. The walls of swaying crackling plants closed in on me. By the time I reached the next intersection, I was drenched in sweat and anxiety. But it made no sense. There was no reason to be afraid. Not this afraid. Not this terrified. My hair swung in tangled knots in front my eyes as my head snapped left and right.

I'd emerged on a wide path. Big enough for a car. And long. Menacing and long. It stretched out into eternity in both directions. And it seemed to taunt me. Daring me to run but laughing at my effort. As if it knew I'd never find my way out. Ever.

And the skies…looking so perfect and beautiful minutes before, darkened. Became angry. Red and angry.

What the hell was happening?

_There!_

A woman appeared at one end of the path. She was young…so young. Barely a woman. Pale skin, long brown straight hair, long black dress. I took two steps toward her to ask for help and stopped. Realizing her expression was not friendly. And then the noise started.

A low buzzing sound from the east. The sound grew in intensity, rumbling and shaking the ground as it approached. I spun around to check the young woman again, she was gone.

I wanted to scream.

Instead, I stared down the path toward the east, unable to take my ears from the noise and my eyes from the horizon of the stalks. A black cloud soon followed the sound, rising over the field. Gaining substance and form as it grew nearer. And then I saw the first one. A hornet the size of child's fist.

There are few things in this world that take the reason from me. And this was one of them.

I froze in place. My vision zoomed in on its face. Its black elongated eyes, creasing and studying me. Its curved and sharp mandible opening and snapping the air in two.

"Fuck," I said, loud and clear, no longer caring that I was a respected librarian and there were kids scattered throughout the maze. I turned and stumbled in the dirt, getting my feet under me finally and ran as fast as I could.

I ran and ran, through paths, winding, cutting, sharp and soft bends. As I ran, my mind tried to logically assess the situation. There were no hornets or wasps that size in the southwest. But there they were. A cloud of murderous stinging giants. I turned a corner and skidded to a halt. I had reached one of the dreaded dead ends in the maze. I flew back around but stopped. The black cloud was there in front of me, waiting, pulsing and singing a death song. I had two ways out. Through them, or through the field. But I knew, they would catch me either way.

I chose the corn rows.

Entering the nearest row, I beat the plants back with my hands. I ran as fast as I could, feeling the first hornet catch me. A vicious jabbing, injecting poison into my back. I screamed. A sharp river of pain traveled down my shoulders and arms. I prayed that I wouldn't go into anaphylactic shock. Then I'd be done. They would kill me.

I emerged into an opening. _Oh no._ It was James Esquivel. Smiling brightly and eating…a corn dog? Where did he get a corndog?

I ran toward him and yelled, "Run!" grabbing his hand and pulling him along the path. Whatever happened, I couldn't leave him behind. James' voice cut into my mind. What was he saying? I couldn't hear beyond the buzzing in my head, and I couldn't stop. We turned a corner and I lost my feet again. Jerking James toward me. We ended up in a tangle in the dirt. I sat up and saw him near the edge of the path. Blood was pouring down his nose into his mouth, his eyes a paralyzed confusion. I scrabbled toward him but he scooted back into the tall plants. I stood and looked down at him. The way his eyes studied me…was he afraid of me? Did I look that bad? That stung? Was I covered in hornets?

I heard another loud noise behind us and hit the path, whirling around in the dirt. Two strange figures hovered above me. It took me a whole minute to realize it was Newton and Antoinette.

"Hornets!" I screamed and pointed behind me.

From there in the dirt, cowering under a wash of emotions, I watched them. The two people that I knew best in the world. But did not know at all at that moment. Newton was not the commanding and controlled flaxen-haired Siren. She was an angel. A dark angel. Black dripping wings spread out from her sides. Golden streaks ran from her hair and danced into the air. Her eyes swirled in their sockets, ancient and dangerous.

And there was Antoinette standing beside her. Not my buxom sweet friend. But a beast, flames erupting from her chest, licking at the air. Her face, that of a formidable and angry warrior. All crimson and fire.

They were speaking to me. Their voices were those of strangers. Deep and haunting, rasping and wretched. They moved closer. I screamed and scooted back. They looked up behind me. They saw it too. They saw them.

Newton, the dark angel, stepped around me. Antoinette, the red beast stepped around my other side. Newton's blurred lips began moving. I could not hear, but could see the words, the grouping of letters, coming out of her mouth, floating into the air, into the oncoming winds and field.

The red beast placed her hands, fingers spread wide, out into the buffeting winds. The bits of dry leaves and particles of dust buckled before her in the air. A cone of rushing wind bowed under her command, protecting everything behind her, protecting us.

As I felt a speck of my sanity returning, I finally heard Newton's incantation. Her voice and power invaded my being and boomed out, washing over everything.

"_Beneath dark surface, beneath the raging moon!_

_Set brightly to this unseemly seeming doom_

_Show yourself, reveal, shift and release these_

_I now command total and absolute clarity!"_

Why were they so goddamn scary? My sisters, my friends, my family? I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the vision of black and red away. When I opened them, Newton was kneeling in front of me, her eyes large and dark, surrounded by smoke and haze, and boring into mine.

Her eyes shifted to the right, taking in James and his young bloody face. "Did you do that?" Her face, her lips, asked me. I simply stared. She shook me. "_Did you do that?!_" The Siren's voice scraped along my ear and pushed into my subconscious.

"Uh…" It was enough to draw me slightly out of my funk, "No. No!" I repeated vehemently. I didn't hurt him. …Did I?

The dark angel seemed to accept my answer and let me go. She towered above me, her lips began moving again. I watched as the letters slowly seeped from her hazy mouth, and I began to relax.

Nothing seemed important.

Nothing was important. What was I worried about?

_There's nothing to worry about, Virginia._

Her eyes held mine. Her lips kept moving. The emotions, all that they were in the last half hour of my life, left me. And when the adrenaline finally left too, I passed blissfully out.


	9. Chapter 9

"What do you think?"

A man was standing in front of me. He had long wild black hair and dark brown skin. His wide white smile, minus one top left tooth, glowed in the dark.

"Alberto?"

"Yes. What do you think, Virginia? How do I look?"

Alberto was wearing a tacky flowered-print dress that hung off one shoulder.

"Oh my. You look uh…really great."

He grunted and shed his clothes instantly, appearing as the last time I saw him–naked except for a linen loincloth.

"You are a bad liar," he said.

I was in the jungle. In the Amazon. In the home of Alberto Chitza. This was clearly a dream.

The hut was exactly as I remembered it. Three big logs burned on the ground in the center of the hut, the lit points touching each other, forming a perfect three-pointed star. A hammock swung from two house beams to the right. Where I slept for three months those years ago.

Alberto had helped me understand my gift more than anyone. He taught me how to work with the threads. How to recognize the different manifestations of matter. He was a good teacher. And so much more.

I looked at the edge of the hut, where the pulse of the jungle, so much life packed into one place, vibrated and roared. "I forgot how beautiful it is here."

I looked especially hard at the small clearing of banana trees to the left. It was where I threw up every night for two weeks. It started a few days after I arrived. A quietness would fill my head. This was inevitably followed by a roar. Like a bear had snuck up and growled in my ear. Five minutes after that, I would throw up. Every night at 9:06PM. "And I'd _like_ to forget that."

"La Hora de Vomitar," Alberto said. "The puking hour." He howled with laughter. "You were not happy about that, Weaver."

I had to smile. "Well, who would be? At least I got smart about dinner time."

"That is true. But you had a warriors' heart. You acquitted yourself quite well. The spirits do not pick just anyone to test so vigorously. To cleanse and prepare so vigorously." He looked across the fire at me. "Why are you here, Weaver? Back so soon for lessons?"

"Here in the jungle in the middle of the night? This is a dream isn't it? I'm not really here am I?"

"What is _here_? But a perception of a time and place?"

"Well, considering you're speaking perfect English, I'm pretty sure this is a dream."

His lips began moving in a smooth dance. Producing sounds I could barely absorb. He was speaking his native tongue–Shuara.

"How about Spanish?" he asked. But even his Spanish was too fast for me.

I held up my hands. "Alright, alright."

He laughed loudly again and slapped his knees. "You eagles are so gullible."

Eagles–people from the north, America. More specifically, people from industrialized nations.

"You are wrong, Weaver. The eagle is a beautiful animal. It is fast, cunning. Master of the skies," he said, obviously reading my mind.

The ground rumbled and shook. A massive figured emerged from the dense tree line.

"Oof!" I said, getting knocked into a wall by the Tapir. "Hi Vega. How've you been?" I asked the five-hundred pound beast as she nudged my hands into rubbing under her chin. I wouldn't say Vega is Alberto's pet, but she was always around. Looking for company and leftover leafy greens.

"I cannot believe that bitch outlived me," he said, watching her ample sassy bottom walk back into the jungle.

"Now, you know you love that girl…wait…Alberto, you're not here anymore? You died?"

"I transformed, Weaver," he said, flapping large imaginary wings.

"I didn't know that. I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry? I am free," he said then smiled. "But I see _you_ have come far in your journey too. You have mastered your sight. Become friends, allies, with the Fabric."

"Oh! Well, yes, I suppose I have more control now." Mostly, that was because of him. "Thank you."

"You are welcome." His smile was brief. "But you have not mastered yourself," he said. The scene shifted around us. We were suddenly in the falls. A beautiful spot down one of the river arms where the abutting cliffs provided warm rushing water down into an alcove. The water was up to my chest.

"What are we doing here?" I asked, but he ignored my question. He continued to stare at me. I broke eye contact with him as I noticed movement in the water. All around us. Snakes. Swimming slowly toward us.

"Fear can be a useful thing, Weaver. But not when it controls you."

"What do you mean? I'm not afraid of snakes."

"That is true. But you are afraid of something," he said, his eyes shifting, glowing and piercing me. "It sits deep in your mind, hunting, preying."

The muddy water camouflaged all but the dark spots on the snakes' bodies, creating a zigzag of spotted ripples on the surface of the water. They were Anacondas. Most of them no thicker than my arm.

"It is a trickster," he said. "Pretending. Waiting. Hiding."

The snakes closed in on me. They began wrapping their bodies around my arms, my torso. "_What_ is a trickster? What is waiting?" I asked him.

"Providing false dreams," he continued.

The snakes wrapped around each other, using the combined strength of their muscles to squeeze me tighter. "Alberto? I really need some help with this one." My lungs were starting to shrink.

"You know what you must do," he said.

The Anacondas were suddenly so heavy. I struggled as they pulled me further under the surface. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Do you know why they squeeze so much harder, Weaver?"

I could barely hear him. The only thing above the surface now was my nose and mouth. I struggled harder as water seeped into my open lips.

"Because you struggle."

…

My eyes peeled open. I was in my bed. At Antoinette's house. I sat up, immediately regretting it. "Ow." My head hurt. My back hurt. My arms ached. How had I gotten here?

I swung my legs off the bed and made my way to the living room.

"Hey, there." Newton's voice softly caressed my mind. She was sitting in the living room on the barcalounger. "How are you feeling?"

I plopped down on the couch. "Like shit. How did I get here?"

"You don't remember?"

I nodded then scooched farther into the corner of the couch as Roscoe joined me.

Antoinette cannot pass a stray dog on the street to save her life. In fact, she'd throw _herself_ in the street to save a stray. As such, she has collected three pooches so far: Roscoe, Baldwin, and Ruby. The boys, Roscoe and Baldwin, are no less than seventy pounds each. Ruby is a thirteen pound mutt. She rules those boys, and Antoinette most of the time. While Baldwin was passed out in a dog bed in the corner, Ruby sat on the carpet in front of me, as if making sure I was getting the attention I needed. Roscoe sat closer, pressing his big 'ol body into mine, putting his paw on my knee.

"I don't remember," I replied, watching Roscoe's soft brown concerned eyes study me.

"Well," she said and leaned forward, "You passed out in the corn maze. Antoinette and I got you to your feet and brought you here. You've been asleep for six hours."

"Oh," I said dumbly.

"What's the last thing you do remember?"

"Uh," I searched my memories, coming up short. There was only flashes of events and images. "Bees…no! Wasps, hornets, hundreds of them. Jeezus Newt, did you see that? That herd of giant hornets?"

She said nothing. She continued to study me, like I was a strange new insect.

"What?" I asked.

Lydia swept into the living room at that moment. Her tie-dyed skirt and layers of linen and knit blouses and scarfs flowing around her. Her necklaces, all adorned with crystals, gems, feathers and beads, clinking and chiming as she walked. She handed me an ornate cast iron teacup, steaming from the top, and set a tray of green things on the coffee table. "Hey Lydia."

"Oh you poor thing. Look at you." Did I look that bad? _Stings!_ I suddenly remembered.

I threw the quilt off and examined my bare arms, felt my back. There was nothing there. "What happened to all the stings? I sure as hell remember that. Did I get treated at the hospital? Did one of the coven heal me?" I could swear I saw Newton's face fall just a bit. As if she felt sorry for me.

"Drink that tea dear," Lydia said. "It will help you recover and detox from all that negative energy."

"Thanks." I took a sip. "Oh my goodness. Lydia," I said, my lips curling in defiance. "_What_ is in this?"

"All good things, dear." She smiled brightly, her long dangling earrings swaying. "Dandelion root, burdock, lemongrass, cayenne powder, licorice root, rosehips, a pinch of cinnamon, an infusion of garlic, and eye of newt," she said, winked and giggled. "Just drink it. You'll feel better."

I looked down into the noxious mysterious liquid.

"Oh!" she said, and rushed back into the kitchen, returning a second later with a half a lemon. Which she squeezed into the teacup. "_That_ should make it go down smoother."

I tried to appear reassured. I took another sip. I was not reassured.

I spotted my cell phone lying on the coffee table. It was flashing at me. I touched the screen. I had a call from my mother.

_That can't be good._ Mom generally doesn't call me unless it's important. She's not big on small talk. I typed in my password and listened.

"_Virginia…it's your mother._" Like I didn't know that. "_Honey…is everything ok? Your energy has been popping up all over the aether for days now. Is something going on? You know I don't generally worry. For things will be what they will. But…just call me when you get this message. I want to know you're alright._" She paused. "_Of course you're alright. But call me anyway. Love you._"

_Nope. Not good at all._

"Newton…Alberto is dead."

"Alberto?"

"Alberto? The shaman?"

"Oh! Wait…how do you know that? They don't exactly have hard lines in the jungle."

"I just spoke to him. He came to me in a dream."

"Oh. I'm sorry, Virginia."

"Me too." Alberto was not just a mentor, he was my friend. "But he seemed really happy."

"So, what did he say? Did he talk about what happened today?"

"Uh…no. He _was_ trying to tell me something. Something about fear. Maybe my serious fear of giant hornets."

She smiled sadly then shifted in her chair. "Virginia, there were no hornets."

"What? But you saw them. I saw both you and Antoinette casting."

"It wasn't a mass of insects. It was a spell."

"What?!" Now I was really confused.

"Antoinette and I, we felt the magic being called from across the maze. It was all around you. All over you."

"Well…is everyone ok? Did anyone else get hurt? Where is Antoinette?"

"She's fine. She's running an errand." Newton's voice softened. "But…"

"But what?" I asked.

"Your little friend."

"James!" I shot from the couch. I couldn't remember much. But I had a single image of him, his face, and blood.

"He's ok, Virginia. He just had a bloody nose. But I think you may have caused that."

I sat back down heavily, feeling a weight pushing on my chest.

"I interviewed him before…before we left. He doesn't remember a thing."

I didn't have to ask. The cold countenance, the cold recall of the events, and how she said the word 'interview', I knew she had bespelled him.

"Newton, what did you tell the staff? The parents?"

She grinned mischievously. "As far as they're concerned, James fell and you fainted from low blood sugar."

"Ah." I touched my forehead. I felt so bad. But now I felt worse. My two worlds had just collided. Putting a child in danger. _I_ had put a child in danger. "Well, what the hell kind of spell was that? And from whom? Was it one of our coven?" I asked, suddenly angry.

"I don't think so. And I don't know. I've never tasted that kind of magic before. It was compounded, complex." I lost Newton as her eyes drifted off.

Before I could ask her what she was thinking, Antoinette burst through the door. "Hello sisters of Norwood County," she sang. Normally, Antoinette's feminine warmth and brightness makes me happy.

"Hey," I said sourly.

"Oh man. How are you feeling? You look…better-_ish_. Has Lydia's foul tea helped you forget how shitty you feel?"

Lydia blew out a breath and shook her jangly head. "You girls."

I wanted it to be funny. I just shrugged.

"Well, you aren't going to believe what I found." Antoinette sat down next to me on the couch. "While you were napping, I went to see Jared. One of my clients."

I frowned. It seemed an odd thing to do in the middle of a crisis.

"Not for that." She frowned back. "Jared is a researcher at the university. He has access to lab equipment that I don't."

"I don't understand."

"After the incident, we discovered something. Well, Antoinette did," Newton said.

"Yeah, I discovered something alright. V, what do you remember? From the time you took off into to the maze when you left us," Antoinette asked.

"Like I told Newt, almost nothing. Antoinette, Newton says I didn't see or hear what I thought I did. And that it was a kind of magic. What the hell happened out there?"

"When we found you, I noticed something on your jacket. You were covered in dust. But not normal dust. It had a weird texture and blackish-red hue. I took some of it to Jared." She pulled a manila folder from her purse and opened it. She began reading. "What we found was a heavy duty cocktail of organic and inorganic materials in the dust." She looked at me. "You were drugged."

Alberto once said that dreams are the real world. And that this one is the illusion. I was feeling the truth of his words. I slammed back the rest of Lydia's detox tincture with gusto.

"Holy witches tits," Lydia breathed.

"From the solvent, the machine was able to identify hypnotics, sedatives, even an anxiolytic." Antoinette rattled off several Latin labels and a few complex pharmacological names with ease. I had forgotten Antoinette was a Chem major. "But the most prevalent substance was Hyoscyamus niger." She closed the folder and looked at me. "Henbane."

"Stinking nightshade," Lydia added darkly.

Newton threw herself back into the barcalounger and hung her head.

"What is it?" I asked.

"This is bad."

"Yeah, I was drugged. That's real bad."

"No, the particular drug. You girls," Newt said, shaking her head. "You need to spend a little more time with the book. If it's henbane, and these other compounds used to induce hallucination, this definitely means this is a witch. There are accounts in the Ngoa'bliss of henbane being widely used in the early 20th century. To induce trance. To provide witches with visions, into the past, present and future."

As Newton spoke, I began munching on the green things from the tray. The first one went down a little rough. Very chewy, but it tasted good. The second one went down easier. The third one I took like I hadn't eaten in weeks. It made my spine pop and tingle. My skin vibrate and hum.

"Henbane went out of favor when witches began getting sick." Newton continued. "Headaches, tremors, nausea, a few deaths even occurred. But this person obviously favors traditional warfare. We may be looking at a rival coven. Though," she paused, "that hasn't happened in decades."

"Holy _cold_ witches tits," I said, agreeing with Lydia, my voice squeaking with excitement, and with whatever was in those green things. "Traditional warfare?" I stuffed another three green things in. "Rival covens?" And five more. "Fucking balls! It'll be a witches war!"

"Dearie," Suddenly Lydia's hand was on my arm. "You'll want to slow your roll there. I did make those specially for you. But they should be eaten with care."

I looked up at her with a leaf hanging out of my mouth. "Why? What's in them?"

"They're kale chips dear. But! I did pull some of the finer energies down from the higher vibrating lines into the recipe." She snapped her fingers and pointed to the ceiling. "You know how juicy the Fabric is the higher planes!"

"Kay." I nodded, like I did indeed know what she was talking about. Sometimes Lydia operates on a level even I can't compete with.

"I think," Newton continued, "That this witch is responsible for the beatings too."

"What do you mean? Like the couple, the guy, from earlier today?"

"Yes. And the two brothers from last week."

"Well, they were acting strange like him. Like they didn't know what they were doing. They both almost seemed to be hallucinating…"

"Henbane." The four of us said then smiled. Though my smile hurt for some reason.

"She's been using henbane to induce visions in these people. To coerce them to beat their loved ones."

"But why?"

Newt nodded her head and asked me again. "Virginia, you didn't see _anyone_?"

"Besides Aislinn? No."

"Aislinn," Newton whispered.

"No, no. She stepped in and helped me remember?"

"Awfully convenient though," Antoinette said. "Maybe this is more about the summons."

Antoinette and Newton shared a look. I really hoped that we weren't getting that petty. That we saw witchly conspiracies everywhere.

"No," Newt said. "The summons is done by the council. She can't affect who is summoned. No one can."

"Wait! I do remember seeing someone in the maze." The memories from the maze were starting to trickle back. "It was…a girl. No! A young woman. Maybe in her early twenties. Long dark hair, pale skin."

"Did you recognize her?"

"No. I've never seen her before."

"Was she a witch?"

"I think so. Shit, I don't know now. I could've hallucinated that whole thing too."

Newton then leaned into me. "Virginia," She lowered her voice, her expression softening. "Why didn't you stop? _Feel_ the magic. Call the lines?"

"What are you talking about? I was _drugged_."

"I'm not talking about that. Using drugs against another witch is just a cheap shot. I get that. But before that. The magic probably preceded the drugs." She shifted uncomfortably in her chair as I brought my feet up, hugging my knees. "This afternoon for instance. You could've stopped, called time, called a single moment, slowed things down. Or changed his manifestation somehow. Then you could've searched for her thread. She's attached to the Fabric like everyone else."

"Newt, you know how much it takes out of me to change things."

"I know Virginia. I know. But…"

"But what?"

"It shouldn't have to."

Newt wasn't trying to be a bitch. She was trying to tell me something. I just didn't know what the hell it was. She finally sighed, patted my knee and sat back. Somehow this action, this small gesture, was worse. Much worse.

Lydia shot from her chair. "Oh! I almost forgot! I made a special poultice for your face. It's been congealing for a while."

"My face is congealing?"

"No silly. You've got some nasty cuts though."

I reached up and delicately inspected my face. I had little welts all over my cheeks and forehead.

"Thanks Lyd." I smiled gratefully at her.

"We figured you probably got those when you belted through the field. Thank god you had a jacket on," Antoinette said.

"Yes. And my paste should have your dermis healed in no time." Lydia jingled and jangled back into the kitchen.

"Newton, maybe this isn't about a single witch. Maybe it's more about the election itself. It can't be a coincidence that the council seat goes up in a few days?" Antoinette asked.

Newton blew out a heavy breath. "Right. I hadn't considered that."

I blew out a breath too. I was her Vinstri. I was part of my job to advise her about aether activity. _I_ should've considered that. "You know Newt, with the elections so close, this may not be about me. She might be after you. The fact that I'm getting drawn into it may just be a coincidence."

There, I felt a little better. Though I could feel my mother cringing across the aether. Using the C-word in my house as a kid was worse than the F-word.

She shook her head. "I don't think so. But it's certainly a possibility. Ruling anything out at this point would be unwise. But I think it's clear that she's targeting you. I think this witch, or maybe even more than one, is trying to draw you out."

"To what end?"

"I really don't know." She sighed, revealing an emotion I'd rarely seen on Newton Hunter's face: confusion. "But we need answers. We need to find this witch before she hurts anyone else."

Newton paused and fixed me with a strange glare. "We need to go see her."

A sinking feeling came over me. The 'her' to which she's referring, is Claire–my mother.


End file.
